Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A French police commander in his sixties was chased, knocked down and kicked in the head until he blacked out outside a Belfort high school on Friday morning. Prosecutors have opened an investigation for attempted murder of a public official.

The officer is the local chief of territorial intelligence. He was in plain clothes, trying to arrest a youth suspected of starting a fire.

This is not a scuffle on the edge of a school complaint. It is the second mob hunt of a lone officer in two days, filmed, shared, and dressed up by parts of the press as a student protest about classrooms.

France school protests

Several young men repeatedly punch and kick a police officer in the head at a park near the Gustave Courbet School in the eastern French city of Belfort. The officer was knocked unconscious.

Approximate location: 47.652447, 6.855094@GeoConfirmed pic.twitter.com/0dIezS4qPK

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) October 2, 2026

Posting several clips in the event some are removed by X:

??WARNING – City of Belfort, France?

Horrific

Migrant kids take down a police officer and almost kill him.

“An investigation has been opened for attempted voluntary homicide on a person vested with public authority by Belfort prosecutors” https://t.co/WPLp275xbZ

— Kosher (@koshercockney) October 2, 2026

?#Choc : #Belfort, un commandant de police âgé de 59 ans a été passé à tabac par plusieurs jeunes avant de perdre connaissance.
Une enquête a été ouverte pour « tentative de meurtre sur personne dépositaire de l’autorité publique.#France #Violence #Crise pic.twitter.com/mK9vl1QbpH

— Guyane ActuHebdo ? (@GuyaneActu) October 2, 2026

Violence from rioters of African and Arabic origins keeps ramping up today against the police in France. In the video, a murder attempt is carried out on a police officer in Belfort. pic.twitter.com/3KafdNdrOi

— RagingDissidentBackup (@JustRaging02) October 2, 2026

The attack happened at about 9:15 a.m. on Friday, October 2, on the grass near Lycée Gustave-Courbet. Belfort prosecutor Paul-Édouard Lallois said the commander “was set upon by a wild horde of young people who knocked him to the ground and beat him with punches and kicks, particularly to the head.” Most of the attackers had hoods up or faces covered. Reinforcements scattered them. The officer had already lost consciousness.

Lallois called it “a scene of unheard-of violence” and said “we came within two fingers of a tragedy.” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote that the images were of “a rare violence” and “unbearable,” that the officer had been “deliberately targeted,” and that “everything will be done to identify the authors of this abject act.”

Nuñez added that the commander was hospitalized after losing consciousness, and that his condition “fortunately no longer inspires major concern.” On Saturday, police sources told France Télévisions the first exams were reassuring and the injuries were superficial trauma.

He was treated at Trévenans hospital with bruises and open wounds to the face, and Lallois said he was “particularly shocked, marked by the savagery of the assault,” with “very visible marks of blows on his face.”

The Alliance police union posted the footage with a blunt line: a cop “hunted like prey, caught, thrown to the ground and struck in the face several times, several against one.” The union’s verdict: “This is no longer anti-cop hatred. IT IS A HUNT FOR COPS.“

The commander heads the departmental territorial intelligence service for the Territoire de Belfort. He was not standing in a cordon. He had just tried to arrest a youth suspected of starting a fire on the grass around the school and of throwing a projectile at officers. The prefecture said that youth was carrying a bag containing hydrochloric acid and protective equipment. The youth got away when the pack closed in.

A separate clip of the arrest, shot in a stream beside the school, was then waved around as proof the officer had tried to drown a teenager. Lallois shut that down on Saturday. “It is the individual who deliberately goes into the water” while trying to escape, he said. Both of them fell. “The youth cannot be immersed in the water, there is not enough water to be immersed.” The commander was on his knees in the stream. The suspect was then cuffed on the bank.

?? A police officer ATTEMPT TO DROWN a high school student today in Belfort, France

He can be seen holding the young man’s head underwater for long seconds. pic.twitter.com/Sga3GRLGLg

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) October 2, 2026

That same suspect is now one of the people investigators want. Lallois said several people have been identified as likely principal authors, and that he was “fairly optimistic” they could be arrested within 24 hours. The youth the commander had handcuffed is “clearly identified as coming to deliver two violent kicks to the head of the police officer,” recognizable on the video by the cuff still on his wrist.

Friday’s beating landed on top of Thursday’s hunt in Paris. A trainee lieutenant with the Paris police prefecture was chased on foot near Avenue Gambetta, in the 20th arrondissement, during a lycée gathering. Voices on the recording call her a “bitch” and scream “Kill her.”

Someone trips her. Others kick her on the ground, including to the head. She filed a complaint. Nuñez called the attack intolerable and said a young trainee lieutenant “was pursued, thrown to the ground and assaulted by several individuals.”

Marine Le Pen wrote: “The image of this young policewoman, pursued by a pack howling its hatred, thrown to the ground and assaulted, is unbearable. These acts deserve exemplary sentences. Let her know that tonight, millions of French people offer her warm support.”

The official story is still that this is a pupil movement about absent teachers, overcrowded rooms and late buses. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said the movement had been “taken hostage by ultra-violent small groups.”

On Thursday alone the Interior Ministry counted 1,949 arrests and 305 injured officers. Geffray said 235 people in the education sector had been hurt, including 65 school staff. About 400 schools were closed on Friday. Nuñez sent the BRAV-M motorcycle units into Paris and said that when police use force on his orders, “they are not facing demonstrators but rioters.”

Footage shows burning classrooms, buses and fire engines set alight, shops looted, and packs going after female officers. The media is adamant that this is not about race or demographics, while those on the receiving end in virtually every single instance are white native French people.

French politician Éric Zemmour urged “This has nothing to do with bad school conditions. Plain and simple. These are ethnic riots and demographics is destiny. Without remigration, this is the fate of all Western European nations.”

Cowen analysts led by Itay Michaeli say the EV market has entered the early stages of stabilization as a combination of more self-driving capabilities and elevated gas and diesel prices has shifted consumers toward these vehicles.

“We are still in the early stages of this looming EV comeback,” Michaeli told Bloomberg in an interview on Friday. “EV market coverage, by our estimation, will grow substantially in the next couple of years by existing players.”

A welcome sign of stabilization came as Tesla and Rivian reported third-quarter deliveries above Wall Street expectations.

Tesla reported deliveries of 486,532 EVs in the most recent quarter, a decline of just 2.1% and well ahead of the roughly 464,000 average analyst estimate, while Rivian delivered 19,248 vehicles in the third quarter, well above the roughly 17,600 expected.

Cox Automotive reports that US EV market share has settled near 6% this year, well below the 11% reached during the rush to buy EVs before the federal tax credit expired.

Another signal of stabilization comes from Randy Parker, chief executive officer of Hyundai’s North America business, who said, “Because of the war, because of gas prices, we’ve also seen a rise and a recovery in EV sales,” adding, “I’ve got more and more dealers now asking for EV product.”

Google Trends searches for “used EV for sale near me” skyrocketed this year as gasoline and diesel prices stayed elevated.

Barclays autos analyst Dan Levy recently noted that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving capabilities have become an increasingly important selling point and are driving sales (read note here).

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the end, Donald Trump’s threat to prohibit diesel exports apparently proved credible after all.

Faced with rapidly rising prices at the pump and an emerging acute shortage of middle distillates, from diesel and heating oil to aviation kerosene, the G7 heads of government decided on Friday, under pressure from the US president, to release their own oil reserves.

For the EU, the perfect storm is brewing: a rising dollar price, the visible control of the Strait of Hormuz by the US military, as well as rising interest rates in the bond markets amid the threat of a sovereign debt crisis, have made the pressure particularly tangible for the EU states: further rising energy prices will hit the fragile eurozone industrial economy considerably harder than the essentially energy-autonomous United States.

The problems of the EU Europeans are homegrown and not the result of American special interests: completely overstretched welfare states, a self-inflicted migration crisis that can no longer simply be wished away, an economy in an atmosphere of departure – though not at home, but fleeing EU regulation, excessive energy costs and the political raid of the Green Deal. They have laid a fuse to the fragile structure of the EU, lit it and are no longer willing to recognize that this powder keg could explode at any moment.

One miscalculation is piling on top of another. In Brussels, Berlin and Paris, they had counted on the Americans shouldering the lion’s share of forcing a regime change in Moscow – cheap access to the country’s energy and resources, possibly bargaining and pricing power, have by now become indispensable to keeping the EU’s economic model alive. Energy costs have to come down, as quickly as possible. From Washington to Brussels, from Moscow to Beijing, they all understand the EU Europeans’ strategic hopelessness. In the case of Russia, instead of a triumph, the result has recently been the destruction of Russian refinery capacity, ironically by partner Ukraine – the next setback in view of the EU’s energy problems.

So now comes the first step toward alleviating the energy price crisis, merely a fight against symptoms that will solve none of the EU’s structural problems.

French President Emmanuel Macron explained the strategy, which essentially consists of three steps:

1. First, 100 million barrels will be released from strategic reserves in a coordinated manner over a period of four months. A substantial quantity of diesel is supposed to reach the market within the first 20 days.
2. Second, the maintenance schedules of the refineries in the participating states are to be better coordinated. The aim is to prevent several facilities from being shut down at the same time – the throughput is above all intended to help reduce the diesel shortage. Where possible, refineries are to temporarily increase their utilization rates. Obviously, this does not resolve the contradiction of how, in the face of destructive climate policy, new refinery capacity could possibly be conjured up in Europe. These projects take long periods of time and, given CO2 certificates and climate regulation, are simply no longer profitable. In the CO2 frenzy, more than 20 percent of refinery capacity had already been destroyed in recent years. This madness is now coming back to haunt them.
3. As a third measure, the G7 states committed themselves not to impose any export restrictions on energy and petroleum products among themselves. This is precisely where the geopolitical background to the release of these reserves becomes apparent: the conflict between Washington and the EU had recently shifted from trade policy issues to the energy market and has now reached a temporary climax with the release of the reserves.

In addition to the measures mentioned above, the International Energy Agency is to monitor their implementation and propose a further package of measures within 20 days.

All in all, the action was an act of desperation that is likely to lose its effect in the markets after a few weeks.

These weeks are exposing the economic-policy sins of a policy that was, on the one hand, driven by the understandable desire to achieve an energy-autonomous situation – Europe still obtains around 60 percent of its energy requirements from abroad. Added to the desire for autonomy were eco-socialist forces that saw their opportunity in the fight against fossil fuels not only to eliminate parts of refinery capacity and fossil energy production, but also to establish their own political center of power with the help of climate policy.

With overregulation, a CO2 extraction economy and a green patronage economy designed to enrich political friends, greater damage is being left behind than anyone is currently willing to admit.

Ultimately, it was trillions spent on the green transformation, on von der Leyen’s Green Deal, that were simply burned and produced no positive effect whatsoever.

A few have made themselves rich, while what remains are industrial wastelands and a slowly rotting continent in unchecked decline.

What awaits the EU Europeans who are still dreaming green is a brutally hard emptiness, delivered straight to their door by reality: The global economy still operates to 87 percent on the rails of fossil fuels and the resurgent power of nuclear energy. Everything else is propaganda.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Mount Everest is seeing more human traffic than at any point in the last three decades of available data, according to Visual Capitalist’s Sofie Gilbert.

Successful climbs are now overwhelmingly concentrated in the spring, when favorable weather can funnel hundreds of climbers toward the summit within a matter of days. Meanwhile, the workforce supporting expeditions has grown alongside the number of people attempting the mountain.

The data comes from The Himalayan Database, which tracks registered expeditions across the Nepal Himalaya. It shows how the scale, timing, and composition of Everest climbing have transformed since the 1990s.

Everest’s Climbing Boom

The number of people recorded on Everest has surged alongside the number reaching the summit.

In 2025, The Himalayan Database recorded 585 visitors and 934 hired workers on the mountain, for a total of 1,519 people. That’s nearly four times the 395 people recorded in 1995.

Visitors include clients and independent climbers, while workers are hired expedition staff, most of whom are Nepali Sherpas.

Of those on the mountain in 2025, 878 reached the summit. Across 2021-2025, Everest averaged about 720 summits per year, more than seven times the annual average of roughly 100 in 1995-1999.

Everest Has Become a Spring Mountain

Decades ago, successful Everest climbs were spread much more widely across the calendar. In the 1980s, The Himalayan Database recorded 87 spring summits and 77 autumn summits, along with successful climbs in both winter and summer. That pattern has almost completely disappeared.

From 2000 through 2009, more than 99% of recorded summits occurred in spring. The concentration became even more extreme in the 2010s, when the database recorded 5,561 spring summits compared with just six in autumn and none in winter or summer.

Since 2020, the pattern has remained virtually unchanged.

Hundreds Can Summit on the Same Day

Even within the spring season, summit attempts cluster around short periods of favorable weather, particularly in May.

This can create extraordinary spikes in traffic near the top of the mountain.

On May 23, 2019, 354 people reached Everest’s summit from Nepal and Tibet combined, the highest single-day total in the dataset.

These traffic spikes are largely driven by Everest’s extreme weather. Summit attempts typically occur when the jet stream shifts away from the mountain, creating periods of lower winds before the summer monsoon arrives.

As a result, hundreds of climbers who have spent weeks acclimatizing can converge on the upper mountain during the same handful of favorable days.

The Workforce Behind Everest’s Climbing Boom

The growth of Everest climbing has also transformed who is on the mountain. In 1995, The Himalayan Database recorded about three hired workers for every five visitors.

By 2025, there were roughly eight hired workers for every five visitors, with hired workers accounting for more than 60% of all people recorded on Everest that year.

Long before most clients attempt the summit, high-altitude workers carry supplies, stock camps, and help prepare the route. Commercial expeditions also rely on guides and other staff to support climbers during weeks of acclimatization and the final summit push.

The risks faced by that workforce became especially visible during two catastrophic seasons. In 2014, all 17 deaths recorded in the database were hired workers. In 2015, when the Nepal earthquake triggered a deadly avalanche at Everest Base Camp, workers accounted for 11 of the 14 deaths recorded on registered expeditions.

These were exceptional disaster years rather than typical seasons, but they underscore the occupational hazards faced by the workforce supporting Everest expeditions.

The Growing Human Footprint

More people on Everest also means more waste to manage. Nepal requires expeditions to remove waste, but doing so at extreme altitude is difficult and expensive.

In spring 2024, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee collected 85 tonnes of waste from Everest Base Camp and higher camps, including 27.53 tonnes of human waste.

Everest’s Crowds Are Also Big Business

Everest is also a major source of income for Nepal. In 2025, the country increased the spring climbing permit fee for foreign climbers from $11,000 to $15,000, with the new rate taking effect in September.

Climbers also support guides, porters, lodges, and other local businesses, making Everest an important source of income alongside the pressures created by growing traffic.

As the highest mountain on Earth, Everest remains uniquely appealing to climbers. Three decades of data show just how much the human presence surrounding that pursuit has grown.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The British government has been handing out thousands of hijabs to illegal migrants washing up on the shores of the country in boats, while Home Office staff have been spending time in Calais cooking meals for them.

Internal figures show 974 hijabs issued to small-boat arrivals between January and June, at a rate of 162 a month. Run that rate forward and the year’s total is already past 1,000 and heading for 1,500.

The same clothing data also proves that the vast majority of those arriving are fighting age males, with more than 10,000 male packs being provided against 2,670 for women, while children’s packs number just 773 for boys and 829 for girls.

‘Don’t act surprised when Britain no longer looks like the Britain you grew up in.’

GB News’ @Benleo reveals that 1000 hijabs have been handed out to small-boat migrants using taxpayers’ money, arguing that Britain needs to stop looking like it ‘comes with a welcome pack’. pic.twitter.com/d3e8M4gtQK

— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 3, 2026

This isn’t a deterrent, it’s an open armed welcome.

Home Office documents show the scarves are part of the dry-clothing pack issued at short-term holding sites such as Manston in Kent. A Home Office source told the Mail the department has a legal duty, under the Short-term Holding Facility Rules, to provide basic clothing, including cultural and religious items, and that migrants’ cultural and religious needs “must be catered for so far as is practicable.”

A spokesman added: “All arrivals receive a basic dry clothing pack where required. The items available form part of standard welfare arrangements.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Mail: “The Government must stop handing out hijabs to illegal immigrants immediately. It’s an insult to hard-working British taxpayers that they’re funding religious items for people who have broken into our country. It should not be for us to fund someone else’s religious practices.”

He went on: “Many illegal immigrants actually hate our values. Many come here for free accommodation and a life on benefits at our expense. Illegal immigrants crossing the channel are breaking into our country. They have no legitimate reason to flee France, which is clearly safe. That’s why we must leave the European Convention on Human Rights so we can deport all illegal immigrants immediately upon arrival.”

Reform UK MP Andrew Rosindell told GB News: “I don’t know why we should be giving these people anything. They’re coming in illegally, and if they’re coming in illegally, we shouldn’t be incentivising people by making them feel like they’re getting everything given to them on a plate. You couldn’t make it up.”

‘Couldn’t make it up!’ Britain ‘dishes out 1,000 hijabs to illegal migrants’ – and YOU have to pay
https://t.co/z6lz99h2mB

— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 4, 2026

GB News presenter Ben Leo put the same point in plainer language: “Don’t act surprised when Britain no longer looks like the Britain you grew up in.” His argument was that the country has to stop looking like it “comes with a welcome pack.”

Campaigning journalist David Atherton also asked the question, “what is the Home Office doing in promoting a backward practice that suppresses women?”

Britain ?? has this year given 1,000 hijabs to women and girls who are illegal migrants.

Welcome mat aside, what is the Home Office doing in promoting a backward practice that suppresses women?
pic.twitter.com/F1p6mSLuhF

— David Atherton (@daveatherton) October 4, 2026

Nearly 20,000 people have reached Britain by dinghy this year alone. The Home Office is keen to note that is down 42 per cent on the same point in 2025, and that summer 2026 produced the fewest summer arrivals since 2020.

A spokesman said: “We have made progress tackling the small boats. Crossings are down significantly.” GB News reported that Sunday morning alone had already put more than 200 arrivals into Dover, with close to 500 since Friday, and a further dinghy heading north from a beach near Cherbourg, part of a westward shift in launch points away from Dunkirk and Calais. A bit lower than last year’s chaos is not the same thing as a border.

‘As long as the UK makes itself attractive, people are going to continue to come in the hundreds of thousands.’

Border Control Security Expert Henry Bolton discusses reports that 1,000 free hijabs, funded by the taxpayer, have been given to small-boat migrants. pic.twitter.com/uehuGzZef0

— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 3, 2026

The hijab figures landed on the same weekend as a Telegraph investigation into who, inside the system, is spending their spare time on the French side of the water.

Around eight members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, including Home Office staff, spent two days in February at a migrant camp in Calais with Care4Calais. They cooked meals and handed out fleeces. The trip was organised by PCS, which has worked with the charity since about 2022, including joint opposition to the Rwanda plan.

‘It will be confronting an entire ecosystem.’

GB News Presenter @WillKingston questions whether activists have infiltrated the Home Office after a report revealed that civil servants have been volunteering with Care4Calais. pic.twitter.com/YLvGUksVWU

— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 3, 2026

Full-time union officials on the visit included general secretary Fran Heathcote and Mike Jones, group secretary for Home Office members. Among the Home Office contingent were Passport Office worker and union representative Karen Alderson, Keith Hannant and Jordan David.

Alderson said: “It’s important that we have a presence here. A lot of our members work in asylum and the way we hear it reported in the media, it’s all about numbers [but these are] people.” Hannant said: “And then you come and see [Calais], and they’re just people like you and me.” David said they talk about the asylum situation in meetings “but none of us have that real hands-on experience of what it’s like to work with refugees.”

We’ve got Home Office civil servants volunteering to work for Care4Calais and now this.

This government has absolutely no intention whatsoever of stopping the boats, unless it’s a by-product of opening the borders.

It makes my blood boil. pic.twitter.com/0pw8WUzPKn

— Henry Bolton OBE ?? (@_HenryBolton) October 3, 2026

Care4Calais’s Charlotte Khan was open about the point of the relationship: “We have people who work in the Home Office.” Jones’s remedy was not removal. It was “proper plans that can deal with the safe crossing to make sure that people can come to the country safely.”

A PCS spokesman said the visit was so representatives “working within the Home Office, including those representing PCS members working in the asylum and immigration system,” could “gain a better understanding of the realities facing refugees.” The Home Office, asked about its own staff, said only that it expected “all employees to meet the highest standards expected of them.“

The charity is not a neutral soup kitchen in this story. A separate Telegraph investigation found Care4Calais had backed asylum seekers disputing official age assessments, including a Sudanese man in his 20s placed in children’s accommodation after the charity referred him to a council. Immigration courts later rejected the claim.

Home Office figures for the year ending March show 6,255 age-dispute cases closed, with 43 per cent found to be adults despite claiming to be children. The charity’s response was that “the real scandal” was children wrongly judged to be adults, and that it is “a humanitarian charity that distributes aid to people who have fled war, torture and persecution.”

I have come to the conclusion that it is a deliberate, state-sponsored invasion of Britain. pic.twitter.com/GDg8TVFrCG

— Patrick Christys (@PatrickChristys) October 3, 2026

Home Office figures put small-boat arrivals since Labour took office on 4 July 2024 at 83,279.

That figure is more than the regular British Army of about 83,000. Since records began in December 2018 the cumulative total is past 200,000, larger than the Army, Navy and RAF combined. About 90 per cent have been male. Two-thirds have been aged 18 to 39.

Meanwhile, this weekend Kent Police ran what Assistant Chief Constable Nigel Brookes called a “substantial” operation around a planned anti-migrant protest in Dover, after masked demonstrators previously blocked the port on 5 September. A face-covering ban was in force from 8am to 9pm under the Crime and Policing Act 2026. Protesters who reached the port were dispersed under a Section 14 notice. Processing of arrivals has repeatedly been linked to the cruise terminal.

Accounts on the ground went further. UK Dispatch reported that Kent Police had put signal blockers near the cruise terminal to stop people live-streaming.

They make me sick ? https://t.co/XlRn35ZNnI

— Angel Of England (@AngelUKxx) October 3, 2026

A state that issues religious clothing to illegal arrivals, sends its own immigration staff to volunteer with NGOs on the beach, and polices the cameras at the terminal is not failing to stop the boats.

It is managing the intake, dressing it, and telling the public the numbers are down. France is a safe country. The dinghies are still launching from Normandy. The welcome pack is still waiting at Manston.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The new “cordon sanitaire” that Trump 2.0 assembled around Russia, the difficulty in maintaining its Sino-Indo balancing act, and the broken feedback loops that afflict its Foreign Ministry are the main strategic risks that must be urgently addressed in order to most effectively ensure Russia’s future.

Putin wisely advised Russians during his keynote speech at the Valdai Club’s latest annual meeting that “we certainly need a roadmap for our movement into the future. What we need is not wishful thinking, an abstract and speculative construct or an unrealistic visualisation of our wishes, but a realistic assessment of risks, capabilities and essential objectives.” His clarion call inspired the present piece that’ll enumerate Russia’s top three strategic challenges and propose pragmatic ways to address them.

The “cordon sanitaire” that Trump 2.0 assembled around Russia poses its primary threat. It encircles Russia in the Arctic-Baltic through the Swedish-led Viking Bloc, Central Europe via the competitive interplay between Poland and Germany, the South Caucasus and Central Asia through what can be described as Turkiye’s Neo-Ottoman ambitions, and AUKUS+ core Japan in Northeast Asia. The preceding hyperlinked analyses embedded in this paragraph describe each of these threats in more detail.

The ones along the western flank could be mitigated through the creation of a US-backed Polish-led Intermarium paired with arms control deals that would altogether reduce the risks associated with a German-dominated militarized EU. This could be facilitated by a resource-centric strategic partnership with the US. Mitigating threats along the southern flank requires a deal with Azerbaijan for demilitarizing TRIPP while the ones along the eastern flank can be mitigated through a deal with Japan over the Kurils.

The next strategic challenge to Russia is to prevent any significant disruption to its Sino-Indo balancing act. Even perceived Russian dependence on China could spook India into pivoting to the US due to the fear that China might weaponize this dependence to get Russia to cut off arms and spares to India in order to coerce India into unilateral concessions to China and its Pakistani ally in their territorial disputes. This dark scenario can be averted by bestowing military and trade privileges upon India.

That could take the form of jointly producing more state-of-the-art military technology and giving Indian products preferential access to the Russian market. If the dark scenario touched upon above isn’t averted, then India’s potential pivot to the US could force Russia to pivot to China and thus make its perceived dependence upon the People’s Republic a fait accompli. And finally, Russia must urgently repair the broken feedback loops that afflict its policy formulation and implementation processes.

Wishful thinking, Lavrov’s strong innuendo that his people can be optimistic to the point of naivete and his explicit critique that they tend not to proactively address latent crises, zero tolerance for contrarian assessments, and reasonable suspicions that actual propaganda (especially its “Potemkinist” variant) has found its way into these loops are the main problems that must urgently be resolved. The uncomfortable possibility can’t be ruled out that this problem blinds policymakers to the other two strategic challenges.

Russia’s broken feedback loops must therefore urgently be repaired in order to maximally ensure that the most effective policies are formulated and successfully implemented for thwarting the military-security threats posed by the “cordon sanitaire” as well as the economic-political ones that a significant disruption of Russia’s Sino-Indo balancing act could swiftly set into motion. These are herculean tasks, but Russia has risen to even more formidable challenges before, so it’s expected to do so once again.

Military aviation and defense news website The Aviationist reports that a US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet returned from Operation Epic Fury carrying a “Sub Buster” marking, raising the possibility that a carrier-based fighter jet was credited with an Iranian submarine kill.

Photographs taken by Jeff Rojas and highlighted last week by The Aviationist show a broken-submarine victory marking, potentially the first such decoration on a Super Hornet.

The Aviationist explained:

Iran lost a large number of its submarine force during Operation Epic Fury, so it is not possible to definitively confirm which vessel the Super Hornet was involved in destroying. However, if the marking is designed to be representative, it most resembles a Kilo class submarine. Of Iran’s three Russian-built Kilo class submarines, one, the Taregh, was specifically confirmed by the U.S. as destroyed while in port. The remaining two are thought to have long been inoperable though, if also targeted, would count as a kill all the same.

The Navy has not publicly confirmed a submarine kill by the fighter jet or explained the marking. The marking also does not establish whether the aircraft delivered the weapon, supported another platform or participated in a broader operation.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of the Treasury and the IRS have proposed regulations to implement a new educational scholarship tax credit program that expands school choice options for parents and students.

The regulations pertain to the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) program, enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. FSTC allows individual taxpayers to claim tax credits for certain cash contributions they make to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). SGOs are entities providing scholarships to cover elementary and secondary school expenses.

The scholarships disbursed by the SGOs can be used by recipients for a wide range of education expenses, including tuition for private school, academic tutoring, books, special-needs services, supplies, computers, and other expenses related to the enrollment or attendance of a student, the IRS said in an Oct. 1 statement.

FSTC “marks a new chapter in educational freedom and opportunity by establishing America’s first nationwide school choice program and empowering states to give students and families more options,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the statement.

“Thirty states have already opted in, and we encourage all 50 states to participate so every American student and family can benefit,” Bessent said.

Individual taxpayers can get tax credits of up to $1,700 under FSTC, while married couples filing jointly can claim credits of up to $3,400, the IRS said.

Tax Credit Calculation

According to the proposed regulations published in the Federal Register on Oct. 2, a taxpayer can contribute to any SGO in any state participating in the FSTC program, provided the organization is listed on the IRS’s SGO list.

The regulations clarify the calculation of tax credits when a taxpayer donates to SGOs and seeks credits from both state and federal governments.

For example, if the taxpayer lives in a state that allows a 100 percent tax credit of up to $2,000 in SGO contributions and the person makes $5,000 in such contributions for a year, the individual can get $1,700 in tax credits from the federal government and $2,000 in credits from the state government for a total of $3,700 in tax benefits, according to the regulations.

Since the FSTC tax credit is nonrefundable, it can only reduce the federal tax bill and cannot generate a refund. However, the regulations state that any unused credit for a particular year “may be carried forward for up to five years.”

In its recent statement, the IRS said that the FSTC is scheduled to launch on Jan. 1, 2027. States are free to join the tax credit program and identify eligible SGOs.

The program prohibits states from imposing unnecessary restrictions on access to scholarships, including limiting the types of schools scholarship recipients can attend. According to the IRS, FSTC expands educational freedom, puts students first, strengthens parental rights, and restores power to the states.

The IRS and Treasury estimate that the FSTC program could support 600-700 SGOs by the end of this decade, with up to 2.2 million scholarships being funded annually and more than 11 million taxpayers contributing almost $26 billion every year.

In addition, roughly 96 percent of children in participating states are expected to be eligible to receive the FSTC scholarship funds, the IRS said.

The Treasury and the IRS also issued temporary regulations establishing key procedures for SGOs and states to prepare for the launch of FSTC next year.

There have been concerns that the FSTC program could be more beneficial in wealthy areas than in poorer regions.

In a Sept. 23 research report, the think tank The Brookings Institution said that children in higher-income areas could have more local FSTC money available than their poorer counterparts. The finding was based on an analysis of county median incomes.

Counties in the top 10 percent of median income were assessed as having $3,859 per pupil in potential FSTC funding. In the bottom 10 percent, this figure dropped to $2,233 per pupil, according to the report.

“Unless FSTC funds are targeted towards low-income areas outside the communities where the money is being donated, we expect the FSTC to become a regressive funding source, even where those funds go to public school students,” the report said.

In July, the American Federation for Children, a policy center that advocates universal school choice, released a report stating that up to 51 million children could benefit from the FSTC program if every state signed up for the initiative.