Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of War (DOW) has announced the selection of four high-energy laser and high-powered microwave systems to expand its operational capabilities across the United States.

The directed-energy systems were selected following a counter-drone pilot program by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, according to an Oct. 5 DOW statement.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of the task force.

“This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland,” Ross said.

The four systems selected for the pilot are laser weapon systems from defense companies Boeing, Kord, and AeroVironment, and a microwave system from Epirus.

The pilot program comes after Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard said during a symposium in Alabama on Aug. 13 that American military bases were ill-equipped to defend against swarm drone attacks.

Jarrard warned that small, unmanned aircraft systems or drones were quickly proliferating in the open market, posing a major security threat in the hands of malicious actors.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) does not have the decision speed to respond to swarms of small drones, said Jarrard, who is vice commander of NORAD’s United States Element.

“We don’t have the sensors,” Jarrard said. “So we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that, and obviously we’ve seen it used. We’re seeing it used on a daily basis around the world, and we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate that threat, but we’re not there yet.”

During a Sept. 30 address at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called drone warfare the “biggest battlefield revolution” in many generations.

The latest pilot phase will test the performance of the directed-energy systems, providing real-time data and feedback on requirements, costs, and best practices of these technologies, the DOW said in the statement.

‘Quality and Quantity’

Drones have played an outsized role in conflicts across the world, including the Ukraine-Russia war and the U.S.-Iran conflict.

In August, Ukraine launched one of its largest attacks against Russia, firing almost 800 drones. Russia then threatened the United Kingdom for arming Ukraine with drones. In the U.S.-Iran war, Tehran has used drones to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The War Secretary said in his Sept. 30 address that the United States has relied for 40 years on expensive weapons, focusing on quality over quantity. While this approach offered many advantages, the United States currently needs “both quality and quantity,” Hegseth said.

“An analogy is a thunderstorm,” Hegseth said. “We need bolts of lightning, high, our existing high-end kill chains, capable of striking unexpectedly and decisively. We also need steady wind and rain. Mass drones and other autonomous attrittable systems that flip the cost exchange and impose unrelenting pressure on an adversary on the battlefield.“

Meanwhile, the DOW said on Oct. 2 that a recent memo from Hegseth to senior Pentagon leaders has directed the department to remove “unnecessary barriers” delaying counter-drone capabilities.

Hegseth termed small, unmanned systems the “defining threat of our time,” and warned that the DOW’s approval for anti-drone technology tends to be snagged by red tape. The memo requires the DOW to establish a process to cut down approval times for anti-drone capabilities from months to just weeks or even days.

America’s adversaries are rapidly developing low-cost unmanned systems and deploying them for surveillance and attacks, the Secretary of War warned.

“We will not answer a fast-moving threat with a slow-moving bureaucracy,” he said.

Delta Air Lines shares fell as much as 3.5% early in the US cash session after the carrier slashed its full-year earnings forecast as soaring jet fuel costs squeezed margins. The cut isn’t totally unexpected given today’s jet fuel prices, but it serves as a warning: Delta owns a refinery that helps cushion the refining crisis blow, suggesting smaller carriers without that in-house refining buffer face even greater pressure.

The Atlanta-based carrier now expects adjusted earnings of $5.10 to $5.60 a share this year, down from a July forecast of $6.50 to $7.50. The new forecast lines up with the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of $5.44 this year.

Adjusted third-quarter earnings were $1.72 a share, below the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of $1.82. Adjusted revenue rose 16% to $17.6 billion, roughly in line with consensus estimates.

“I wouldn’t call that a surprise to anyone, it’s all because of higher fuel prices,” CEO Ed Bastian said of the new forecast. “If this continues to go higher for longer, which I think it will, as the premium airline in the industry we have the best ability to be able to price for that.”

We pointed out earlier this year that Delta operates an in-house refinery called Trainer Refinery. Monroe Energy (a Delta Air Lines subsidiary) officially operates the 185,000 to 190,000 barrels per day refinery. It’s situated along the Delaware River in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu told Bloomberg Television earlier that “the refinery has about a $1 billion benefit to this year, so it is providing a bit of a boost for them.”

“But higher fuel will eventually eat into consumer demand,” Kahyaoglu added, “and remain a major headwind for all carriers.”

Delta is the only US airline that operates a major refinery, suggesting other carriers face a difficult operating environment amid sky-high jet fuel prices.

The earnings cut sets a difficult backdrop for United Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which report later this month.

Delta Air Lines shares fell as much as 3.5% in the early US cash session.

The broader airline index fell about 1.5%.

US air travel remains resilient …

… in the face of high jet fuel prices crimping carrier margins. 

On Friday the Trump administration rolled out sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court, calling it a “rogue” organization and declaring that the action is part of an effort to ultimately dismantle the tribunal.

“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a video address on social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

Rubio continued, saying of Republicans and Democrats, “Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all.” He then warned: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.“

Importantly, the top American diplomat then turned to pressuring Americans allies, from European countries to Japan, to join the US-led sanctions and efforts to dismantle the ICC.

“We expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in this rogue court,” he said.

“If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer,” he added.

Ironically all of this stems in part from ICC action related to the US invasions and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where yes – real US war crimes took place. These Bush-launched wars remain deeply unpopular among the American population – and even President Trump has long derided Bush’s infamous war of choice.

The Associated Press writes on Friday:

U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions on Friday, after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African prosecutor Navi Pillay, who had led investigations into potential ICC charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, however, long predated the Nobel Prize announcement.

The Trump administration imposed targeted sanctions last year on several ICC officials such as prosecutors and judges, citing the ICC’s 2024 decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime ​Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over what the court alleged were improper actions carried out by the Israeli government during its war in Gaza.

Earlier in 2026, three sitting ICC judges sued Trump and his administration over the sanctions, arguing that they were unlawful.

And then again in August, the US imposed additional targeted sanctions, namely against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye.

Washington has scoffed at the court and sought to erode its influence stretching back multiple administrations, all the way back to the George W Bush era itself. But all this was renewed as the ICC began targeting Israel and its leaders in the wake of the Gaza war.

Authored by Jordan Schachtel via American Greatness,

Just before the Senate adjourned for campaign season, big banks joined forces with longtime critic Elizabeth Warren and Senate Democrats to kill the Clarity Act.

The bill would have clarified federal rules for cryptocurrency markets and created a reliable, trustworthy entrance point for Americans to access digital assets.

After advancing the bill out of the Banking Committee on a bipartisan basis, Democrats blocked the bill from even being debated and amended on the Senate floor, giving the banks exactly what they wanted: less competition.

Warren, who spent much of her career opposing banks, has suddenly found common cause with them in opposing a critical component of the Trump Administration’s financial innovation agenda. As Sen. Cynthia Lummis put it, Warren “hates President Trump so much that she’d rather have no rules of the road for the digital asset industry – leaving consumers vulnerable and law enforcement empty-handed – than take the win for consumers.“

Throughout negotiations, Democrats and the big banks won concession after concession. Nearly 250 pages of big bank and Democratic priorities were added to the bill, including an agreement by President Trump to a sweeping and unprecedented ethics package. The banks and Democrats refused to take yes for an answer, stalling and eventually killing Clarity.

As Clarity negotiations heated up, another fight over the future of Americans’ finances simmered on the back burner: Open Banking. What is open banking? Put in simple terms, open banking allows consumers to securely share their financial data with the third-party apps, payment processors, and services of their choice. That means a customer can connect a bank account to a budgeting app, compare loan offers, or use a payment service without the bank choosing the service for them.

Right now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with input from the White House and other decision-makers in the administration, is in the process of finalizing the open banking rule (known to DC policy wonks as Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act). The open banking rule will determine who has control over Americans’ bank data, how it can be used, and whether banks can charge tolls for customer-authorized apps to access that data.

According to a recent research report from S&P Global, 8 in 10 Americans use financial apps, engaging in the digital economy to spend, save, and budget. And as pundit Mary Katharine Ham pointed out this summer, there are direct implications for the president’s eponymous Trump Accounts.

With Clarity sidelined for the foreseeable future, the open banking fight is heating back up and could very well be the next pillar of the administration’s innovation agenda to be toppled by the big banks. Codifying a weak open banking rule would not only give the banks another win at the expense of President Trump’s agenda, but it would also come at a cost for American families and workers.

Making it harder or more expensive for Americans to connect their bank data with apps of their choice – which is what our country’s biggest banks ultimately want, whether they say it or not – would give legacy financial institutions the upper hand over competitors and encourage customers to use the bank-backed apps and services. Who wants to be forced to use a bank-backed app over something as simple as Venmo?

That’s what the gatekeepers of our financial system want. Major banks are aggressively lobbying for changes that would restrict competition, and if they succeed, those changes will make it harder and more expensive for customers to choose their own services. They would also stifle everyday innovations like custodied cryptocurrency wallets, which rely on open banking to seamlessly verify accounts and buy digital assets.

American consumers, not the big banks, should decide which apps can view their sensitive financial information. That principle should apply across the financial services industry so people can connect their accounts to the payment apps, lenders, and crypto wallets they choose.

A strong Section 1033 rule would protect that choice. It would also give new, innovative apps a fair shot to compete by allowing them to design financial services around consumers’ needs.

With the rule back on the drawing board, big banks are attempting to seize the advantage and capture more ground. They are lobbying to add provisions to charge “data rationing” fees or limit data access under the guise of security. Strong safeguards are essential, but data security cannot be weaponized to limit customers’ access to competing services.

Smaller fintech firms, upstart payments innovators, and crypto-wallet providers would have a harder time absorbing the data-access fees that banks could charge them. The result would be fewer services, less pressure on banks to improve their products, and fewer choices for Americans trying to manage, save, spend, borrow, or invest their money. A bank that can control access to a customer’s data can control which competitors ever get a meaningful chance to compete.

The Clarity vote showed how far big banks and Democrats will go to kill the Trump agenda and choke off innovation and competition that responds to families’ needs. We can’t let that happen again.

Handing another victory to the unholy big bank-Democrat alliance is bad politics, bad policy, and bad for our wallets. No more fees, no tolls, and true open banking will make life easier and cheaper for all Americans. The CFPB should reject pressure from the banks and write a consumer-friendly Section 1033 rule.

Saudi Arabia has finally reopened King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Friday following attacks by the Houthis that killed three people and injured several on Thursday, and caused widespread flight suspensions and delays in the region.

Airport facilities and aircraft were hit in the attack, with at least one Saudi Airlines passenger plane having been destroyed. The airline announced that tragically one of its pilots was killed.

“It is with profound sadness that Saudia announces the passing of Captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami,” the national airline announced.

In total three people were killed in the Thursday attack on the airport, and three others injured, with unconfirmed but widely circulating images appearing to show extensive damage.

The most severely damaged aircraft was on the ground and without passengers at the time it was struck, national reports say.

The country’s General Authority for Civil Aviation announced in a social media post, “The attacks also resulted to injuries to a number of citizens and residents, ranging from minor to severe, and were immediately transferred to the hospital to receive the necessary medical care.”

And Saudi Airlines subsequently stated: “Saudia’s flights and operations at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh returned to normal as of 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 8, 2026. The airline continues to monitor flight schedules and communicate with passengers through its official channels.”

There was further damage in the capital as a result of the Thursday Houthi ballistic missile launches:

Some diplomats said they had received warnings, and some schools in Riyadh told parents there were orders to shelter in place, though authorities did not issue a public alert. Reuters could not identify the source of the booms.

According to the Saudi Civil Defense Directorate, shrapnel fallout from a missile interception caused damage to a children’s nursery and a medical clinic in Riyadh.

The State Dept has issued a new travel warning for Americans, after earlier telling diplomats to stay away from Riyadh’s international airport:

Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise heightened vigilance due to the complex security environment. Be aware of potential flight cancellations, airspace closures, and travel disruptions. Iranian-supported Houthis have engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties. The hostilities have the potential to escalate rapidly. Americans traveling to and from the Middle East should monitor information about airport and airline operations. Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other U.S. interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world, including U.S. businesses and other institutions. Read the latest country-specific alerts at: https://t.co/ouQakQVHet

— TravelGov (@TravelGov) October 8, 2026

Previously, three people had been killed across the kingdom from Houthi attacks Tuesday into Wednesday, with 36 injured, in attacks leading up to the Thursday ballistic missile assault on Riyadh.

Over in Yemen, the Saudi-backed forces are claiming key gains around the Bab al-Mandeb coastline amid intense fighting.

Saudi-funded Al Arabiya is meanwhile hailing on Thursday that “Yemen’s armed forces take complete control of Bab al-Mandeb after clearing the area, military sources say.” The Houthis have since issued a statement saying the opposite:

Houthi spokesperson says that the Saudi’s made no progress and repelled the Saudi-backed troop advancement towards the Bab el-Mandab Strait

Contradictory reports abound on the status of the fight for Yemen:

SABA citing a military source: The enemy’s forces, which are attempting to attack the southern part of Bab al-Mandab and are originating from the Lahij province, have been targeted. The attack has been repelled, resulting in dozens of casualties (killed and wounded) and the destruction and disabling of several vehicles.

— barry with the NED (@bonzerbarry) October 9, 2026

However, independent conflict observers have noted the fighting is still fierce, and that Saudi reports of the retaking of large territory has been premature, exaggerated, or else false – amid an ongoing fog of war.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The corporation that lectures Britain about “fair” pay has published its own wage numbers.

In six of its seven career bands, white staff took home a lower median wage than black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic minority colleagues.

The figures come from the BBC’s own 2025/26 pay-gap tables. Black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic minority employees received 13.2 per cent higher median pay than white workers in the lowest band, and 5.3 per cent more in the senior-leader band. White median pay was higher in just one of seven scales.

‘If this was the other way around you’d have to call this racist discrimination.’

@PatrickChristys is shocked as figures reveal white BBC employees are paid less on average than their minority colleagues. https://t.co/uIHesgPCyq

— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 7, 2026

The corporation’s report is blunt about what a negative gap means. It states that a negative figure shows the minority average is higher than the majority average, and that “the average pay for our Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff is higher than or close to the average for white staff at all Bands.”

Across the whole workforce the BBC can still point to a 0.7 per cent median ethnicity gap in favour of white staff, and a 7.6 per cent gap in favour of men. That headline exists because white employees still hold a larger share of the best-paid jobs, which pulls the aggregate up.

The corporation itself says the proportion of ethnic minority staff in higher-paying roles rose last year, producing what it called the largest year-on-year movement in the figures.

The overall median ethnicity gap has already fallen from 1.8 per cent to 0.7 per cent. Eighteen per cent of staff covered by the report are black, Asian or from another minority ethnic group.

The same tables show the pattern is not confined to race. Women in senior leadership were paid 1.4 per cent more than senior men. Disabled managers were paid 7.5 per cent more than non-disabled colleagues. The highest-paid LGBTQ+ employees earned 8.8 per cent more than “non LGBTQ+” colleagues.

At the top of the publicly funded broadcaster, several of the characteristics the diversity bureaucracy treats as disadvantaged are the ones drawing the higher median.

On GB News, Patrick Christys put the double standard in one line. “If this was the other way around you would have to call this racist discrimination, wouldn’t you?”

He then asked whether ethnic minority staff at the BBC would “stand in solidarity with their white colleagues and demand higher pay for them.”

A guest on the same segment said that if the story were reversed and had appeared in The Guardian, “there would be outrage, there’d be strikes,” and that the corporation could “get away with it because it’s our money.”

The BBC’s stated line is that pay is “fair, clear and competitive.” A spokesman stated: “The BBC is committed to fair and equal pay for all. We continue to monitor our pay gaps closely and do expect to see small fluctuations year-on-year.”

A 13.2 per cent median gap in the lowest band is not a fluctuation. Nor is a reverse gap in six bands out of seven. The corporation also runs mentoring and career schemes aimed at black, Asian and minority ethnic staff, inside a “Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging” strategy: 50 per cent women, 20 per cent ethnic minority, 14 per cent deaf, disabled or neurodivergent, 25 per cent from working-class backgrounds.

It insists these are goals, not quotas, and that they have no bearing on pay.

Sir John Whittingdale, the former culture secretary who drew up the BBC’s last charter in 2016, told The Telegraph the BBC “ought to be paying staff entirely on the basis of the value and merit they contribute for the job they are doing.”

He added: “The BBC quite rightly put this discrepancy right, but I would expect the same principle of fair pay to apply to all characteristics, be it race, sexuality, or indeed gender.”

He was referring to the earlier gender gap at the top, which the corporation moved to close. The same principle has not been applied with anything like the same urgency here.

None of this arrived in a vacuum. In January 2024 internal recruitment guidance told BBC staff not to hire candidates who were “dismissive or derisory of diversity and inclusion.” Applicants were to be asked what diversity meant to them and how they would promote it.

A BBC source said the place “currently feels captured by Left-wing activists and is unable to deliver on our core principle of impartiality.”

Former BBC journalist Robin Aitken put it plainly: “These guidelines illustrate just how embedded DEI ideology is in the BBC. The rules act as a mechanism to maintain groupthink and screen out anyone who is sceptical of this novel doctrine of diversity and inclusion.”

Days later, a senior BBC Three scheduling coordinator, Dawn Queva, was reported to have described white people on Facebook as a “barbaric bloodthirsty rapacious murderous genocidal thieving parasitical deviant breed” and “a virus, barbaric & bloodthirsty.”

The posts also included anti-Jewish material, including “Nazi parasites” and “holohoax.” The corporation that screens applicants for insufficient enthusiasm about diversity had a scheduler on the books whose published views about white people read like a tract.

The same instinct runs through the output licence-fee payers are compelled to fund. Last month the BBC pulled an entire episode of the CBBC series Horrible Histories from iPlayer, plus at least seven other sketches, because the episode dealt with slavery, Victorian child labour, chimney sweeps, poverty, disease and the First World War.

Further cuts removed scenes in which white cast members wore darkened makeup to play ancient Egyptians or Incas. Uncut versions remain on Amazon Prime. Historian Guy Walters called it “an insane decision” and said: “The BBC has absolutely no idea what children like. Children love horrible things. The entire career of Roald Dahl is based on that.”

The BBC said the edits were made seven years ago, with the programme makers, “to ensure the series meets our editorial guidelines for children’s programmes.” It would not say which guidelines.

A week earlier it had removed 11 sketches from the 2006 series That Mitchell and Webb Look, including pieces that satirised racist thinking rather than endorsing it. A spokesman said: “This is a 20-year-old sketch show; in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones that still work today and not the ones that don’t.”

Comedian Geoff Norcott called it “retrospective moral pruning,” adding that the sketches “were literally satirising the thought processes behind racism.” Dom Joly called it “classic BBC overkill” and “hysterical censorship.” A separate review this year found audiences already felt diversity was being “shoe-horned” into programming.

Hiring filters. Pay tables that run against white staff in almost every band. An archive quietly trimmed of anything they deem no longer “works”. And while compelling people to pay for it, the BBC claims it is free from institutional bias.

After sliding back near cycle lows in September (as Republicans lost faith in the recovery and MidEast tensions re-escalated), analysts expected UMich consumer sentiment to fall further in preliminary October data released this morning.

And the analysts were right as The University of Michigan’s preliminary sentiment index decreased to 46.3, the lowest reading since May (below the median estimate of 47.6). However, the current conditions gauge sank to 44.7, the lowest on record, from 50.9 in the previous month, while the expectations index rose to 47.3 from 46.3, the first increase since July.

That is to say that Americans see the Current Conditions in America as worse than at the trough of COVID and the peak of the Great Financial Crisis (except stocks are at record highs this time)…

While year-ahead expectations for personal finances and business conditions crept up slightly, buying conditions for durables plummeted amid high prices and borrowing costs.

Increases in sentiment among Democrats and Republicans were offset by a decline among independents this month.

Year-ahead inflation expectations ticked up from 4.6% last month to 4.7% this month. The current reading substantially exceeds the 3.4% seen in February before the Iran conflict began, along with all 2024 readings. Long-run inflation expectations also stepped up from 3.4% in September to 3.5%,

Overall, sentiment for lower-income consumers and those with smaller stock portfolios dropped steeply this month, groups that have fewer resources to weather increases in prices.

“Frustration over cost-of-living continues to mount,” says UMich Survey Director, Joanne Hsu, adding that “despite their differences, consumers of all political identifications agree that the outlook for the economy has softened since the beginning of the year prior to the Iran conflict.”