Devastated relatives who arrived from abroad visited the site of the collapsed building where four tourists and an elderly couple lost their lives on Friday morning, September 25, 2026. With tears in their eyes and broken voice they told media reporters that they came for the identification of the victims adding that the recognition was […]

The post All six victims of Athens explosion identified appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

A massive backlog of voter registration applications in Texas could affect the outcome of local and state elections, including a contentious election involving a U.S. Senate seat.

Public officials in the Republican-controlled state have not yet acknowledged what the error actually is. It’s also possible that the error could have affected elections from before the primary elections in March 2026, officials have acknowledged.

“Texas county voter registrars across the state have received a flood of new voter registrations and updates to voter registration records submitted through the Texas Department of Public Safety,” said Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials. “Some of these submissions date as far back as October 2025.”

It’s unclear how many voters could be affected by the error. McGinn acknowledged that “counties have received anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of records to process.” In Bexar County alone, around 45,000 registrations that have been submitted have not yet been processed.

All 254 counties in the state appear to be affected. The Texas Secretary of State’s office alerted all counties to the issue in an email last week, writing:

Counties have alerted us to the fact that some older [Department of Public Safety] registrations are now appearing on their dashboard. We are actively investigating this issue to determine the source of these historical records.

The situation is dire, as the registration deadline for Texan voters for the upcoming general election is October 5. County officials have until October 19 to process registrations, which is the same date that early voting begins.

James Talarico, a Democrat and state representative who is running in the Senate election against State Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), called the situation “unacceptable,” and encouraged all voters to check their registration status.

“Less than two weeks before the voter registration deadline, thousands of Texans are now in the dark about their voter registration status — even more aren’t aware of this error at all,” Talarico said in a statement. “This is what a broken, corrupt political system looks like: Texans follow the rules, register to vote before the deadline, and still risk losing their God-given right to the ballot box because their government failed to do its job.”

The Senate race between Talarico and Paxton is a close one, and even a small error that goes unaddressed before the November election could affect the outcome.

A longtime Republican stronghold, Talarico is currently ahead in the polls with a slim lead against Paxton. According to an average of surveys collected by the polling aggregate site FiftyPlusOne, Talarico secures around 47.9 percent of the vote, while Paxton receives around 44.6 percent.

Earlier this month, the UK government announced plans to cut off trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank—including weapons shipments. But according to new disclosures made to Parliament, reported Thursday by Declassified UK, the sanctions regime has not actually led to any weapons licenses being suspended or revoked, validating warnings by some critics that the new Labour government’s effort to cut […]

The post UK’s new Israel sanctions haven’t suspended any weapons transfers appeared first on Asia Times.

What will a DSA-led state look like — will it back defund and community control of police, or bow to the powers that block affordability? Lawrence Grandpre, political commentator for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, explores this question in his recent Baltimore Times article, “The Dangers of ‘Law and Order’ Leftism: Toward a Black Power Public Safety,” asking whether DSA will embrace the outmoded Law and Order politics that fueled America’s prison boom. As officials like AOC and Mamdani backtrack on defunding police — one of the biggest carceral drains on housing, healthcare, and education funding — Grandpre sits down with former political prisoner and Rattling the Bars host Mansa Musa to unpack these contradictions ahead of the midterms, where Democrats hope to retake the House and Senate. Tune in for an unflinching look at the Left’s relationship to the state and to law and order.

Related Links:

• The Dangers of “Law and Order” Leftism- Toward a Black Power Public Safety
• Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle Facebook, X, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Youtube

Credits:

• Production/Post-production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. Today I’m joined by Lance Grandpre, political commentator with Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, to discuss his recent article for Baltimore Times, “The Dangers of ‘Law and Order’ Leftism—Toward a Black Power Public Safety.” Thank you for joining me, Lance.

Lawrence Grandpre:

Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:

Alright, so let’s start like this here. At one point we had in 2020 where you had a push for the abolishment of prisons and to dismantle the police system as we see it during that period. But immediately you had a pushback and the pushback came in the form of saying that this was woke. Now we look at the United States and mass incarceration, armed policing, and you juxtapose that with the lack of funds for healthcare, lack of funds for education and lack of funds for housing and the fact that the criminal injustice system is in itself painful when it comes to poor and oppressed people, mainly people of color. Let’s start with your article.

Lawrence Grandpre:

So this article stems out of a protest I went to because sometimes people say if you talk about police reform or defunding police, you don’t care about victims. And this protest was the opposite. This was a Black elder, a former member of the Baltimore Black Panther Party who was assaulted by many teenagers and it was caught on film. So of course Fox News, our local Fox News is showing this over and over again saying, “Lock them up, what’s wrong with these kids?” And these were community advocates, many of them women, Queen Mother Victorious who lost her son to gun violence, Mama Gwen, who was formerly incarcerated, coming together with community and saying these young people, what they did was a problem, not because it just violated the law, because it violated our community respect for elders. And we don’t want to just throw the cops at these kids and throw away the book, but if people know who these young people are, turn them into us, the Black community, so we can make sure that they are held accountable but not railroaded by the criminal legal system.

And I though the sophistication and intelligence of that response and even Baba Ade, the elder who was hurt, saying the Black Panther’s argument was that capitalism and racism breed criminality in the community.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lawrence Grandpre:

And it’s not for us as the vanguard to educate ourselves and use political consciousness to eliminate criminality, not just from a material standpoint, but from a psycho-spiritual standpoint. And it was really interesting because this was a few days after AOC went on the news and said, “Nobody’s talking about defund anymore. Woke 1.0 was crazy.” So it was really interesting that the people who were supposed to be talking about social justice, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, some of these other so-called leftists,

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lawrence Grandpre:

Even they were saying, “Defund—that was just people on Twitter trying to look woke. Nobody really talks about defund in real life.” And these Black elders, Black people in West Baltimore, were saying things like, “We have a $700 million police budget in Baltimore. How are we going to have that and schools and investments in the Black youth?” So these Black people who the left is telling us are conservative are actually more progressive than the DSA.

And I thought that was very telling that, in this moment, going into the midterms, there are these leftist democratic socialists who are trying to get elected, and because they want to get elected, they want to push away from radical rhetoric because they think it’s turning off voters. And I think that that goes to show you that when it comes to Black people, we need to have our own vision of public safety, because what’s being offered by even the left, the Democratic Socialists, is willing to push our issues aside, because they have a misunderstanding of our issues. They think it’s just a bunch of radicals on Twitter as opposed to Black folks been talking about Defund since the ’50s. And our visions of Defund are very different than what you saw on Twitter in 2020, but these folks wouldn’t know that.

Mansa Musa:

So how do you see the DSA in terms of how they look at the budget, just police budget and the fact that it’s undercutting the services of the very people they supposed to be representing?

Lawrence Grandpre:

It’s interesting because I think if you are a democratic socialist, it’s obvious you believe police are a tool to protect capitalism. So a world where if you’re a socialist, the idea that you wouldn’t talk about [how] protecting capitalism getting more money is a problem for you—it’s weird.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lawrence Grandpre:

But these folks are a particular brand of socialist. Many of them were very much pro-Bernie Sanders. So when Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris used conversations about identity to attack Bernie, now a lot of these folks see all conversations about race as just distraction from class issues.

So, even when Black people talk about police, they say, “Well, it’s not serious. No one really talks about Defund. So you’re really just trying to attack the socialist candidates.” And it’s like, no, Black folks have been the community control of the police platform.

It wasn’t just invented by the Black Panther Party. It was talked about by Black activists in the ’40s and ’50s, in part because the understanding that if the police were seen as a solution to all social problems… it’s not just police, it’s police-ism: the idea that policing is the only solution to the problems facing all poor people, but especially Black poor people, that’s going to push money away from all the other programs we need in the Black community. So Black folks have been saying that, really, since the Northern migration.

So when we talk about community control of the police, part of that is having community control boards control the police themselves, hold them accountable. And we’ve worked on that as LBS, but it’s also community control of the institutions that produce public safety beyond police. So, housing, addiction, education. I mean, I love to point out that Bobby Seal, he was in AmeriCorps before he was a Panther. So he would be shooting dice with the Black kids trying to school them on AmeriCorps’ time. And part of his frustration is these nonprofits don’t let us actually do the training we need to do with these youth, but we got to get the money from the nonprofit because that’s the only job we got. So even the Black Panthers program was a push for Black control of resources to socialize our youth, specifically around things like violence prevention. And again, the idea that all of that is just under this large framework of “woke”… And again, the right wing hates woke, we know that, but even some of the Bernie folks—they really hate “woke,” because they associate it with the attacks on Bernie and they see all conversations about police as woke.

Mansa Musa:

Let’s unpack some more about DSA because we see upheaval of DSA type activity and we see in terms of midterm elections, some of the candidates that ran on DSA platform have made it through the primary. And so at the same token, what is their appeal? Because they vacillating when it come to social issues.

Lawrence Grandpre:

The federal government, in theory, can print money. So there’s this belief that if we just spent more money, things will get better, and the Democrats have been afraid to spend money. I think that in the DSA, it’s like, “Let’s really focus on, in theory, cut the military budget, invest in community through things like Medicare for Al”l. Now, if you don’t have the integrity to stand up for “Defund the Police,” why do you think we would believe that you have the integrity to stand up to “Cut the Military Budget? If you don’t see the connections between the violence of policing and the violence of militarism, why would we expect you to be able to push the military budget to community?” 

Lawrence Grandpre:

These are intelligent, college-educated voters who feel like the government needs to spend more money, in part, because it’s a job program for people like them. So they have an interest in fighting the austerity of the Democratic Party, in part, because they want to see conditions improve for the community, but also in part because it’s a business model for the voters of DSA. And that’s a big concern for us, because even with Medicare for All, there’s no world in which healthcare should be a for-profit enterprise. But it’s not just that doctors are racist. When you look at things like Black women get more cesarean sections than other women, So, literally, they’re getting cut open in these dangerous surgeries. Black women, if you have a child in the hospital, you are going to get a drug test. And even if you pop for that drug test from the epidural, the drugs they give you for the pain, they might take your kid away. So engagements with the medical system are not just imperfect for Black people; they are places of surveillance and violence.

So we, as Black people, need systems like a birthing center, like nutrition, upstream investments that are different than what the DSA crowd cares about. So the idea that we should just accept not talking about Defund to get Medicare for All ignores the fact that Black people—we don’t just need healthcare to not give us a bill. We need to change the vision of healthcare so we control it. And the DSA is not interested in that. They don’t really think that way. And they honestly believe the only way anything will get passed if it goes to everybody. Universal programs prevent racial backlash. Because we know any spending in America is seen as giving money to welfare queens. So we just got to give the same thing to everybody and that’ll deal with racial backlash.

And what we know is anything you do that gives out any tax money will deal with racial backlash, but also do things that don’t give Black people the power we need to build for ourselves. It will just put us in systems that really are built by other people that, even if it’s good for them, can often be violent for us.

Lawrence Grandpre:

But I think that, again, when you have a class-based vision of the world, that has become in some ways hostile to thinking about race because you had negative experiences with people weaponizing race against people like Bernie Sanders. You’re not thinking about what a political agenda would look like when you actually invest in… because we should do both. We should have a class-based redistribution of wealth, but that restribution should also be invested in community institutions that reflect the culture and history of specific communities, not just Medicare for All, but clinics that use the history and culture of the community to provide that healthcare. Nutrition that reflects the culture and the way communities like to be fed so that they can have upstream nutrition so they don’t need to go to the doctor in the first place.

These things should go hand in hand. And I think it’s concerning that it feels like, because DSA is becoming electorally viable in some spaces, that [they] only talk about affordability issues, only talk about Medicare for all, only talk about ending the war in Iran, without really thinking intelligently about a platform that would meet people’s needs for community control of public safety, broadly defined. So not just policing, but again, youth programming, schooling, getting nutrition. Our kids are literally hungry.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Lawrence Grandpre:

They’re fed junk food, but they’re undernourished. So we actually do have serious nutritional needs as we have obesity in the inner city. So what does it look like to build a food sovereignty ecosystem, whether it’s Black Yield, Black Church Food Security Network that can actually feed ourselves as opposed to just the DSA, it’s like, well just make sure they get food stamps. And food stamps are cool, but food stamps are not the vision of liberation for us.

Mansa Musa:

But talk about, because when we look at DSA, and it’s misnomer even to use the name socialist because when you look at. We got examples in Cuba and when they first took over, the literacy rate in the countryside was 90%. 90% of the people could not read or write. They organized, it’s a book out called Vincent Ramos. We were trying, that’s the name of it. And they organized all the college kids, all the intelligence and made them go in the countryside and stay to educate the people, to get them to read and write.

They didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to create a system where they can come out the country, live in a project style housing dwelling and get them public schools that’s not going to teach them nothing.” They actually educated the people and a lot of that education led to what we see today in Cuba, got best medical, despite all the things going on. So when we talk about DSA, and I think this is a danger, and maybe you want to weigh in on it. I think it’s a danger that confronts that notion that this is a socialist party and because the right wing is going to put them right in the category like communists and they can resurrect that notion.

Lawrence Grandpre:

Socialism, to me, the key word is social. You either have the market making decisions about planning for the world or you have people doing it socially. It’s clearly better to do it socially, but there are divisions within that larger social body. And my concern is that even amongst some of the people in the DSA crowd, the leftists, some of the visions of what they would socially plan may like and lean on policing partially because they are afraid of being looked at as communist. So they might, for example, even in very, very progressive Bernie Crat, DSA San Francisco, there’s this push to, well, we got people homeless, they have mental illness. So they as individuals may not be rational, so we are going to use policing to bring them into drug treatment.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lawrence Grandpre:

And again, this is like even Bernie people sometimes say this. So there are elements of even the less progressive mindset that are like, we as a society can’t let you be out here damn bad. We have to help you lift yourself up. And if that means we have to involuntarily commit you to treatment, and if we have to use police to do that, then we’ll do that. While one thing that we talk about here in Baltimore is, and Baltimore’s been a heroin town since the 60s and 70s. And it’s been really hard for us, but we’ve also had systems of informal community care that have been designed to address some of the worst exigencies of drug abuse. Nika Namdi from a program called Fight Light said that grandma’s basement was the first halfway house. We had systems where elders, you would be able to stay with family and you would be able to get certain stabilizing influences through your social network so you wouldn’t be out on the streets.

So in that worldview, we would look at something like making sure these abandoned homes get rehabbed and given to Black people in community. That’s partially an anti-homelessness effort.

That’s an anti-addiction effort. That’s a crime fighting effort. So it’s not just social housing, it’s not just public housing. It’s also making sure that Black people in communities can pass down their family homes

And they have a way to make sure that they’re affordable so they can stay housed because that produces capacities for people who do suffer from addiction to not be on the streets committing crime. And again, the DSA vision is so limited to what they see and what they know, they sometimes end up using police where it’s like, if we just had networks of people in community that could care for each other, we wouldn’t need police for that. But I also do think folks are afraid. I know academics are very afraid and some folks are afraid of looking too radical, looking like the rhetoric of 2020 was burn down the police station.

Mansa Musa:

And

Lawrence Grandpre:

I think that’s also part of what they want to distance from when they talk about we not doing defund no

Mansa Musa:

More. Part

Lawrence Grandpre:

Of it is the direct antagonism with the state, the cost of that has increased for them. What we know is that the cost is high for us, whether we’re openly antagonistic or not, we are politically antagonistic by making demands upon the state to recognize our humanity. So we’ve always had to deal with that potential backlash. And I think now for some folks they’re saying, oh, I can’t use that. We’re not trying to do that radical rhetoric no more

Mansa Musa:

Because

Lawrence Grandpre:

People are losing jobs, people are potentially getting deported. So it’s like the ’70s, marginally away from the rhetoric of the ’60s and leaving the Black radicals out to dry after the draft ended. I think the white radicals moved away from radicalism and that we’re seeing a similar

Mansa Musa:

Dynamic. Okay, but we know that this is the 60th year of the anniversary of the Black Panther Party. And I was talking to somebody about just like we’re not anti-police. The party wasn’t anti-police. One of the things they did, one initiative they took was, and this is a revolutionary suicide by Huey Newton, where they had this particular intersection that didn’t have no stoplight and it was in the Black community and kids was getting hit. So somebody came and said, “Man, they not doing nothing about this. We’ve been complaining.” So they went down there and became traffic guards, the members of the Black Panther Party. They held up the traffic, let the kids walk by, you know what I’m saying? And this is what they did. And they had guns with them because they had one part of their program was policing the police. The police in turn came and told them they stop.

Now you guys stop this. They said, “Well, we’ll stop this when y’all put a traffic light up there or y’all stop directing traffic. We don’t care which one you’re going to do, but you do or we going to continue to do.” They wind up putting the traffic light up there. So in terms of that particular example, what are the core aspects of the Black Power Public Safety?

Lawrence Grandpre:

I like your example because the party was a little bit different in different cities, but I think one thing that stands out to me is that they had questions about police, but the Black Panthers in some ways were law and order. It was law and order within the party. You cannot show up high, very much about discipline, law and order in the community. If you’re selling drugs, if you’re a parasite in our community, we’re going to deal with you. And I think that’s a perception, because this is something that happened in 2020, that there were white leftists being like, “Let’s just run wild and be anarchist and burn stuff down.” It’s always been Black people that’s been like, “We’re not doing that.” So the idea that somehow that is tied to Black issues, no, we’ve always been extremely serious about our liberation.

So when the Black Panther Party talks about doing a plebiscite in order to get Black sovereignty, I think that’s an example of why we need to think about community control of the police in terms of we have in Maryland, substantial police reform is nowhere near enough, but we need to have the ability for the community to have investigative power to be able to investigate police. We need to have community resources to be able to flow to community institutions so the community decides who’s doing public safety in that community. So when we talk about who’s funded to do violence prevention work, it shouldn’t just be the people who are tied into the police or the people that are tied into the nonprofit world. We got tons of people in community that have been doing work that have not

Mansa Musa:

Been funded.

Lawrence Grandpre:

And the fact that they are getting a little bit of money now, I think is part of why we’re seeing these unprecedented declines in violent crime. So Black power public safety isn’t just people getting grants. It is the community having the power to determine what the grant making criteria are. It’s the community being able to tax institutions in their community that they see as producing crime. And by that I mean Johns Hopkins. That’s

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Lawrence Grandpre:

Because Johns Hopkins gentrified the whole area of the

Mansa Musa:

City. The big colonial king in Baltimore.

Lawrence Grandpre:

And when you gentrify a whole part of the city, you’re moving people to different hoods and that creates a lot of possibility for conflict. My father was a cop for 20 years, so he talked about East Baltimore used to be called the country club because it was so quiet up there. But when Hopkins gentrified all those people out of the Middle East Baltimore, a lot of them moved to Northeast, which creates a ton of conflict, pretty much increased the murder rate in that part of the city. Hopkins should have to pay for that. They got a $13 billion endowment. So Black Power Public Safety is about us not tying in our future to gentrification, which is what the police really are a tool for. They’re a tool to produce gentrification. That’s good for that business model because gentrification needs policing.

Mansa Musa:

We

Lawrence Grandpre:

Should be able to put tax on the gentrifier so we can secure our communities so they can’t gentrify them, own our own property, stabilize our communities, but then invest in the capacity to take care of our youth, to do violence prevention, to take care of our health. All the things they stripped from us, they should have to pay us to be able to do for ourselves. In that world, I think we would have Black Power

Mansa Musa:

Public Safety. Right. And that’s basically what the Black Panther Party was doing because they had the survival program. Exactly. And the concept was Survival Pending Revolution. The Survival Program wasn’t like us being in a basement, taking guns apart in the dark with blindfolds, then putting them back together, making bombs, reading Ann Archer’s cookbook. No, survival program was the free breakfast program, free medical, sickle cell anemia, taking prison families to prison to visit them, alternative education. This was a survival program, survival pending revolution. And what the goal was, going back to your point, the goal was to stabilize the community for self to be able to be self-determined. So if I’m self-determined, I got self-determination. A great example for Baltimore would be the Clean Block because when they had Clean. And I remember I was locked up and I used to read the Afro. Afro had a big thing about Clean.

The sense of community that came out of that, the Clean Block, when they was able to say, “We recognizing this neighborhood for Clean Block.” But more importantly, that neighborhood not only had a clean block, but that neighborhood had policing. That neighborhood had a sense of identity that if I seen you, I know you Meryl’s son or Meryl’s daughter. I know you Tommy’s son or Tommy’s daughter. You know me and you know that if I see you doing something that you ain’t supposed to be doing, then I’m going to tell your parents the minute you see me, you’re going to alter your behavior because that became the sense of community. But like you say, once Hopkins got in the equation, and not only Hopkins, I remember when Shafer started when he did the Inner Harbor and they started pushing people out of certain areas in order to get to Inner Harbor and they pushed people into.

Either they pushed them out into the county or they pushed them into the interior of Baltimore in neighborhoods they wasn’t familiar with or neighborhoods they was familiar with and had issues with and would automatically create a conflict. But talk about how do you see, because what you just outlined is in fact a model that is one, inexpensive because it becomes self-contained. So the monies that you’re putting towards astronomical police budget can go towards stabilizing some of the projects that deal with housing, deal with substance, the people that’s actually doing the work.Like you say, you got people that actually going around taking people and putting them in a place and letting them drown. So we talk about how you see DSA and the gains that they’re getting and the models they’re using. How do they fit into this narrative? Are they rewriting the script and say they’re going to invest in this type of thinking or their model is, like you said earlier, we creating a cadre of intelligent people that can grant write and that’s going to become our funding source and not only our funding source, but create an infrastructure for doing case studies and then marketing these case studies, the new Jim Crow.

Lawrence Grandpre:

Yeah. I think it’s to be determined. We’re going to see a huge increase in DSA affiliated leftist people in Congress. Now, whether they’re going to be able to write bills, whether they’re just going to vote on stuff that comes from the Republicans, we’re going to see. I think the real test is going to be 2028 when it’s possible the Democrats will take the White House, Senate and the Congress. So it’s really going to be important for us these next two years for people that believe in the possibility of these folks doing good to push them. What is your actual proposal on how you can use the power of the federal government to enhance the ability of people On the ground locally to have more ownership and power and control over the institutions that impact their lives. Because policing is a state and local issue. Feds actually have relatively little control

Mansa Musa:

Over it,

Lawrence Grandpre:

Except given a few grants here or there. So really it is, do you have a vision for whether it’s through food sovereignty policy, whether it’s through manufacturing policy? The metric for us at least is again, local self-determination and the ability for local people on the ground to own the institutions that are doing this work. I think part of even going back to the New Deal, the frustration with these progressives is that sometimes they do these top down technocratic re-imaginings of what solutions look like that don’t involve community. Mamdani, people have called him a technocratic socialist.

Mansa Musa:

And

Lawrence Grandpre:

I think that’s not on some right wing stuff, but that’s scary from a Black power

Mansa Musa:

Perspective

Lawrence Grandpre:

Because technocracy oftentimes views Black peoples as widgets and inputs in someone else’s equation for progress and liberation. And I think part of the value of the Black Panther Party is they called themselves socialist, but in many places, in many ways they were also Pan-Africanist and Black nationalists. And they were combining them all to say that, yes, we will fight capitalism, but we will not just make the people this abstract proletariat to fit within a Eurocentric version

Mansa Musa:

Of

Lawrence Grandpre:

What a class centric revolution will look like. We are going to lead our people on our vision of what we think fighting capitalism looks like. And again, I think it’s going to be our job to force the DSA to not see that as woke, to actually recognize that that is just what black people demand. And that’s the cost of us being in political coalition is you respecting our self-determination.

Mansa Musa:

And I agree it’s to be determined because one, you gain electoral office through coalition building. That’s really where it come out of. And you’re able to get a common identity out of the coalition, common identity being what we want change, the change that we want to see. Harold Washington in Chicago, he was successful at building a coalition. And to his credit, he tried to maintain the standard, but they fought him tooth and nail at the state government. So he wasn’t able to get a lot of things done. But the fact of the matter, what we’re asking or we’re talking about is not really hypothetical because we see this in Europe and we see examples where police don’t have guns. They call in, if it’s a violent situation where a gun, they got a unit that comes in to deal with that. But outright, the police walk around with no weapons because the lack of fear towards the society.

Lawrence Grandpre:

You mentioned New Zealand, I think in that as

Mansa Musa:

Well.

Lawrence Grandpre:

But in New Zealand as well, the Aboriginal communities actually have really pushed a model for youth justice that places tribal elders and tribal institutions at the heart of restorative justice programming

Mansa Musa:

For

Lawrence Grandpre:

Youth who are engaged in acts of criminality. And so that’s been a big fight for Aboriginals in New Zealand and Australia to really demand tribal sovereignty over their youth as opposed to putting them into the juvenile justice system.

Mansa Musa:

But

Lawrence Grandpre:

Again, given the legacy of the private schools where they beat the Indian out of you and stuff like that. And again, I think it’s jarring for white people to think that we as black people are asking for something similar here in America because the joke is white people are so settled in America, they don’t even see themselves settler colonists no

Mansa Musa:

More.

Lawrence Grandpre:

And I think unfortunately that’s part of what’ happened with the DSA. It’s like the idea of black sovereignty is just jarring to them in a way that you’re an Australian, you know you took over Australia and there are people here that are really dark skinned, you’re not.

Mansa Musa:

But

Lawrence Grandpre:

I think in America, that basic concept of having to negotiate with people who have their own sovereign agendas is not something that they’re used to conceiving as anything other than a tool for the centrist to undermine the Bernie’s of the world.

Mansa Musa:

And

Lawrence Grandpre:

I just think the reality is if DSA is going to get Black support, it’s going to really have to reckon with the visions of the world that come from Black people, including our visions of public safety.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And before we close, you got any closing remarks?

Lawrence Grandpre:

I really appreciate this. Please check out our podcasts and search of Black Power and Political Commentary Corner. So those are on YouTube. Check us out at lbsbaltimore.com. We have all of our email updates about the work we’re doing in Annapolis to push criminal justice policy, reparations policy, which

Mansa Musa:

I’ve

Lawrence Grandpre:

Never seen DSA has been skeptical on, but we’re very adamant about its practical utility as a framework to invest in Black sovereignty here in Maryland. And you can find me on any social media at Neil Nubian, N-E, the number zero, Nubian, N-U-B-I-A-N. Right.

Mansa Musa:

And we ask our audience to really take deep thought on this particular subject matter. It’s not like say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud. It’s not when Stokley Carmichael in the ’60s, they called Black Power, James Brown, Song and Song. We’re not in that state. We’re not trying to go back into that state of mind, that conditions created that state of mind. We’re talking about an analysis of having Black political power as it relates to our safety. We’re talking about because we’re the ones that’s unsafe, we’re the ones that this astronomical budget is being doled out to, to make us feel unsafe, to lock us up. Then we believe, as the brother was talking about Lawrence, that we believe that we have a right to define what is safe for us and what is not safe for us. And making that definition or defining that, we see the necessity to make an analysis and implement it.

And in this case, this is an analysis that we want to, I think the Gullah Geechee in South Carolina got a thing where they do restorative justice. And so the fact that you infringe on the community, that they might not put you out the community, but they’re going to put you in such a shameful state of mind and the fear of what you’re getting ready to lose or make you get the person to come back or people come back and lie in accordance with the social system that they set up. We ask that you continue to support the real news and rattling bars because guess what? We’re actually the real news. Thank you.

💾

More than 11,000 children have severe life-changing injuries, including thousands who have had limbs amputated as a result of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The European Parliament has backed calls for an EU-wide strategy to tackle worsening shortages of healthcare professionals, including an ambition to increase the health workforce by one million, as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and dentists urged the European Commission to turn the recommendations into concrete action.

The own-initiative report, led by MEPs Loucas Fourlas (EPP, Cyprus) and Ruggero Razza (ECR, Italy), warns that shortages of doctors, nurses, carers and other professionals are becoming structural, driven by ageing populations, rising demand for care and persistent burnout...

The European Commission unveiled its EU Kids Act on Thursday (17 September), proposing sweeping restrictions on children’s access to social media and new obligations on technology companies to address growing concerns over young people’s mental health and online safety.

The proposal would prevent children under 13 from accessing social media, while 13- and 14-year-olds could use restricted “mini accounts” under parental supervision. From the age of 15, teenagers would be able to open their own social media accounts. The legislation also requires platforms to prove their services are safe for minors, reversing the burden of proof from regulators to technology companies....

Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and MEP Dirk Gotink (EPP, Netherlands) Photographer: Mathieu Cugnot © European Union

The European Parliament has approved a major overhaul of the EU’s customs system, tightening requirements on e-commerce platforms, introducing a new handling fee for goods ordered from outside the bloc and creating a central EU customs authority.

“This is the biggest reform of European customs since 1968, supporting trade and the enforcement of EU rules,” said MEP Dirk Gotink, (EPP, Netherlands) who steered the legislation through Parliament. Gotink said European customs authorities had been overwhelmed by a “tsunami of Chinese parcels” and that the reform would give customs officers stronger tools to enforce EU standards.

Under the new rules, e-commerce platforms and sellers shipping goods directly from non-EU countries to European consumers will be treated as importers. That will make them responsible for providing customs data, handling applicable charges and ensuring products comply with EU law.

The reform also introduces an EU-wide handling fee on goods ordered directly from non-EU countries, with member states required to begin collecting it no later than 1 November, 2026. The European Commission will determine the amount and review it every two years.

Companies that repeatedly breach EU customs rules could face fines ranging from at least 1% to as much as 6% of the value of goods they imported into the EU during the previous 12 months.

The overhaul will also establish an EU Customs Data Hub, designed to replace at least 111 existing customs IT systems. A new EU Customs Authority, based in Lille, France, will manage the hub and coordinate customs cooperation and risk management across the EU.

The Council has already given the reform its final formal approval, making Parliament’s vote the final step in the legislative procedure.

The US Supreme Court on Monday night rejected a bid by the Trump administration to keep onerous US Postal Service rules for mail-in ballots in place, which voting-rights defenders said risked depriving millions of people of the franchise in this year’s midterm elections.

After a back-and-forth legal battle over the USPS rules that dragged on for months, the nation’s highest court issued the 7-2 ruling without elaborating on its legal reasoning, though right-wing Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued dissents in favor of President Donald Trump’s side.

The ruling in USPS v. California was in response to a legal challenge brought by the League of Women’s Voters, the attorneys general of numerous states, and others who argued that newly-announced rules by the Postal Service regarding mail-in ballots, changes prompted by an executive order issued by Trump, would prevent people from having their ballots counted and cause chaos for those trying to administer this year’s elections.

A victory for democracy, a defeat for election deniers. https://t.co/MKjfKmgyTv

— David Crowley (@DavidCCrowley) September 15, 2026

In response to the ruling, the plaintiffs’ legal team said the decision was “a critical step to ensuring free and fair elections this November by maintaining access to mail voting for millions of eligible voters across the United States and lifting the dire threat that the Postal Service would disenfranchise them.”

“Mail voting is safe, secure, and reliable—and the Trump administration has presented no evidence to the contrary, as the courts have repeatedly recognized,” the statement continued. “We will remain vigilant in countering threats to free and fair elections and ensuring that every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot and have it count.”

“Today’s decision is a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement. “The stakes in this litigation could not have been higher.”

Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, was among the other pro-democracy advocates who welcomed the decision.

“Today’s decision is a major win for the millions of everyday Americans who count on vote-by-mail—our seniors, service members, busy parents, rural voters, and voters with disabilities,” said Solomón in a statement. “Vote-by-mail is safe, proven, and vital; even the president uses it. This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side. Our Constitution is clear: states run our elections, and voters choose their leaders—not the other way around. No administration can strip the people of their power.”

Michael McNulty, senior policy director for Issue One, a nonpartisan group that works to defend free and fair elections, also welcomed the ruling, but said vigilance would still be necessary going forward.

“The fight to preserve states’ authority to administer elections is far from over,” warned McNulty.

“President Trump continuously and falsely claims fraud in mail-in voting without evidence,” he added. “Despite voting multiple times with this method, he remains obsessed with centralizing control over elections to tilt the playing field. However, for now, one piece of that centralization effort is blocked, and it ensures that mail-in voting for the midterms won’t be disrupted.”

Lockheed Martin and a team made up of Boeing and Anduril are now facing off head-to-head to supply a new middle-tier surface-to-air missile to the U.S. Army. The service wants a second interceptor for its new Enduring Shield system, which can already fire AIM-9X Sidewinders, to expand its capabilities, especially against incoming cruise missiles.

Boeing and Anduril announced their offering had been selected to move ahead to the next phase of the competition to develop what is formally called the Integrated Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) Second Interceptor on Wednesday. The Army subsequently confirmed to Breaking Defense that Lockheed Martin advanced to phase 2 of this program. Rafael Systems Global Sustainment, a U.S. subsidiary of Israeli defense contractor Rafael, had also been in the running, but was not down-selected.

The Army’s search for a second interceptor for Enduring Shield traces back to at least 2023. The system, developed by Leidos’ subsidiary Dynetics, is entering operational service now paired with the AIM-9X. It is designed to provide short-to-medium range defense against a variety of aerial threats, including drones. The Army has not had any kind of mid-range air defense capability since it retired its Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in the 1990s.

A model of the missile Boeing and Anduril have put forward was only shown publicly for the first time earlier this year. Boeing says it is a clean-sheet design and it uses a solid-fuel rocket motor provided by Anduril.

In its announcement about the Army’s down-selection, Boeing shared a previously unreleased rendering of the design, which notably had two sets of fins toward the tail end of the body. The model that has been shown so far only has one set of fins at the very rear of the body. Whether the rendering reflects a newer or older version of the design is unclear. What is seen in the rendering may also be an additional booster rocket motor not seen on the model, which could be necessary for ground-launched applications.

Boeing has also said that the new interceptor is being developed with an emphasis on lower cost and producibility. Modularity and open-architecture systems to enable “faster, lower-cost upgrades by allowing seeker, avionics or software blocks to be swapped without redesigning the entire weapon” have also been particular focus areas, according to the company.

Other details about the missile’s design and capabilities, including how it is guided, remain limited.

“Our scalable production approach is designed to provide a reliable, affordable layer of defense against a range of aerial threats to protect the warfighter with practical, dependable capability when it matters most,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, had said in a statement earlier this week.

Lockheed Martin first showed a rendering of its design last year, but has also shared relatively specific details about it since then. For what has been seen so far, it is visually reminiscent, at least in broad strokes, of a compact air-to-air missile concept called Cuda, which the company previously promoted for a time in the 2010s.

The design is “not new,” Chris Murphy, senior manager of Business Development for Integrated Air and Missile Defense Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, confirmed to TWZ in October 2025.

“There are technologies that we already have that we’re leveraging,” Murphy added at the time. “But the requirements for the missile are such that they’re going to be new technologies, and there’s going to be some level of development in order to get those integrated.”

“So you know that our [PAC-3] MSE missile [for the Patriot surface-to-air missile system] is a hit-to-kill system, right? We have great confidence in that technology,” he also said when asked specifically about whether the interceptor would have a traditional warhead. “We also work [on] blast-frag[mentation warheads] on other programs. So we will look at everything. That’s part of the trade space the Army has asked us to look at.”

The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) is generally presented as a hit-to-kill weapon, meaning that it is designed to destroy its target through sheer force of impact. However, it is actually something of a hybrid design that includes a high-explosive “lethality enhancer” charge to increase its chance of scoring a hit, something you can learn more about here.

For its part, the Army has talked in the past about wanting its second interceptor for Enduring Shield to offer roughly comparable capabilities to the AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), but in the same form factor as the AIM-9X. A key driving factor behind the size requirement is retaining magazine depth. The system’s existing palletized launchers can currently be loaded with up to 18 Sidewinders in individual canisters.

Magazine depth, together with more flexibility to engage different threats in different envelopes, is exactly in line with the stated purpose of the Enduring Shield system. The ongoing conflict with Iran, as well as other recent crises in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, have underscored the threats posed by large-scale complex barrages that blend together long-range one-way-attack drones and cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles are also a very worrisome part of the equation, though Enduring Shield is not capable of engaging them. We will come back to this in a moment.

“I do want to highlight a couple of things that I think are very critical gaps that we have. I don’t think – I cannot add anything to the emphasis on magazine depth for currently fielded systems, or for the need for cheaper and [a] wide-ranging mix of interceptors,” Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told TWZ and other attendees in a keynote address at the 2026 Space & Missile Defense Symposium last month. “That couldn’t be made more loud and clear from the highest levels of our government.”

At that time, Rafferty also stressed the need to further expand the Army’s ability to provide multi-layered air and missile defense capabilities. Enduring Shield, as the Army’s first middle-tier air defense system in decades, is already a key component of that broader effort.

The Army also more specifically sees Enduring Shield as central to reducing over-reliance on its Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. The immense strain on the service’s Patriot force and its inadequacy to meet existing operational demands are well established at this point, and have only been reinforced by the latest conflict with Iran. The Army is notably in the process of establishing its first new Patriot battalion in years, on Guam, which will actually be a composite unit also equipped with Enduring Shield. Pairing the two systems together helps free up Patriot batteries to engage higher-tier threats, especially ballistic missiles, which may themselves be targeting air defenders directly.

Additional efforts are underway now to further expand the Army’s array of available lower- and higher-end air and missile defense interceptors, as well as new and improved sensors and networks to go with them. This will only help further distribute capability and capacity, giving air defenders more operational space to employ systems when and where they are likely to be most effective.

There is still a question of whether the Army will actually start receiving new interceptors for Enduring Shield. A major issue that has emerged in recent years is being able to produce key munitions in a timely manner to bolster stocks ahead of conflicts and keep them replenished during sustained operations. To use the example of the Army’s Patriot units again, strain there has been further exacerbated by massive expenditures of interceptors in the course of operations in the Middle East in recent years, as well as demand emanating from Ukraine. There have been a succession of reports in recent months about stockpiles of Patriot interceptors, as well as other critical munitions, becoming ever more critically low. The Pentagon has been working with several companies to dramatically step up production of munitions, including existing and new designs, but it will still take time for those agreements to translate into physical results.

The Army has now at least moved to the next phase of the competition for a second interceptor for the Enduring Shield system, demand for which is already growing.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post One Of These Missiles Is Set To Be The Army’s Next Mid-Tier Anti-Air Interceptor appeared first on TWZ.

Ukraine has unveiled a new domestically developed surface-to-air missile system designed to turn a diverse collection of air-to-air missiles into a flexible ground-based air defense capability. Called Shershen, Ukrainian for hornet, the system combines a locally-developed command-and-control architecture, a dedicated surveillance radar, and multiple launchers that can employ both Ukrainian and Western missiles.

The system was displayed at the MSPO defense exhibition in Kielce, Poland, by the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries (NAUDI). The example shown is reportedly the second operational prototype and is described as being close to its production configuration.

At the ongoing MSPO-2026 defense and industrial exhibition in Poland, the launcher of the Ukrainian Shershen air defense system, developed by Radionix, has been presented for the first time, along with the R-120K surface-to-air guided missile specially developed for it (second… pic.twitter.com/5RfZWHWuxl

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 (@TheDeadDistrict) September 9, 2026

The appearance of Shershen comes as Ukraine continues to develop an increasingly diverse family of indigenous air defense systems, while simultaneously adapting older missiles and foreign-supplied weapons to address a severe shortage of interceptors.

That effort has produced some distinctly unconventional combinations. Ukraine’s so-called FrankenSAM programs have paired existing Soviet-era launchers and radars with Western missiles, while other systems have adapted Soviet R-73 air-to-air missiles for ground launch. The United Kingdom and Denmark have also worked with Ukraine on the containerized Gravehawk system, another concept built around repurposed air-to-air missiles.

Shershen takes that philosophy a step further by making missile interchangeability a central feature of the system.

The Shershen battery consists of a Perun command-and-control vehicle, an Athena radar, and four Borei launchers.

According to the developer, the system’s architecture is deliberately open. This allows it to use different missiles from different manufacturers and also permits the integration of third-party surveillance and guidance radars.

The company says Shershen can currently employ the R-27 (AA-10 Alamo), R-73 (AA-11 Archer), AIM-9 Sidewinder, and AIM-132 ASRAAM, while compatibility with the R-60 is also being explored. These weapons come with a mix of semi-active radar or infrared homing seeker heads.

Air-to-air missiles are already available in considerable variety across Ukraine’s arsenal and those of its foreign partners. Being able to employ several types from a common ground-based system provides much more flexibility than a conventional SAM designed around one dedicated interceptor.

It also offers a way to exploit missiles that were never originally intended to be fired from the ground. That means Shershen’s launcher and fire-control system are meant to be interceptor agnostic, at least to a certain degree.

Shershen’s Athena radar is reported to be capable of detecting targets at ranges of up to 85 kilometers (53 miles).

In terms of the engagement envelope, Shershen is claimed to be capable of engaging aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones at ranges of up to 25 kilometers (16 miles) and altitudes of up to 10,000 meters (32,800 feet). Clearly, these figures will vary widely depending on the type of interceptor.

When employing radar-guided missiles, the system’s engagement architecture can reportedly guide as many as six missiles simultaneously.

The advertised performance figures have not been independently verified, and it remains unclear what target types and engagement conditions were used to establish them.

Україна представила складові мультикаліберного зенітного ракетного комплексу «Шершень» на міжнародній виставці MSPO 2026 у польському місті Кельце.

Міжнародний консорціум компаній Shershen Group, який створює ЗРК в інтересах України представив, показав командний пункт,… pic.twitter.com/9wAS7ewxzg

— Мілітарний (@mil_in_ua) September 10, 2026

The developer says the second prototype has completed initial testing, including successful interceptions at a test range.

One of the Borei launchers displayed at MSPO were armed with an R-120K, a new Ukrainian missile equipped with a radar seeker and is intended to be capable of both air-to-air and surface-to-air employment.

The R-120K remains under development, however. Work is reportedly continuing on its rocket motor, meaning that its eventual performance and production status remain uncertain. Still, having the option of including the R-120K on the Shershen system in the future is significant.

Rather than relying indefinitely on stocks of Soviet and Western air-to-air missiles, Ukraine could eventually have a domestically produced interceptor specifically tailored to its growing family of ground-based air-defense systems. That will become increasingly important as stocks of legacy missiles are depleted. Earlier this year, it was reported that Ukrainian F-16s were running low on their air-to-air missiles, which include the same AIM-9s that are used in some FrankenSAM systems, as well as being compatible with Shershen. But even before that, it was clear that Western-supplied missile stocks in Ukraine across the board were diminishing, in some cases drastically, with critical interceptors like the AMRAAM and Patriot being badly affected.

Ukraine’s need for additional surface-to-air missiles has become increasingly acute during the full-scale war, especially as Russian drone and missile barrages have stepped up.

The shortage has encouraged Ukraine to pursue a combination of indigenous development and unconventional adaptations.

The FrankenSAM initiative, conducted with U.S. support, demonstrated how existing Ukrainian systems could be combined with foreign missiles to rapidly create additional air-defense capacity. Ukraine has also fielded modified Osa systems armed with R-73 air-to-air missiles rather than their original 9M33 interceptors. Other R-73-based concepts have even been demonstrated aboard Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels.

Shershen appears to reflect the next logical step in that evolution: rather than creating a one-off FrankenSAM combination, build an architecture from the outset that can accept multiple missiles. Additionally, with so many different ground-based air defense systems now being fielded, it comes with the significant advantage of a standardized launcher and control interface that can accommodate a range of interceptors.

At the same time, Ukraine is pursuing substantially more ambitious indigenous SAM projects.

Earlier this year, a previously secretive Ukrainian missile identified as the Koral made what appeared to be its first public appearance. The program dates back to at least 2021, when Ukraine’s Luch design bureau presented a concept for a medium-range surface-to-air missile.

Koral is intended to provide a much longer-range capability, potentially filling some of the gap left by Ukraine’s aging Soviet systems and supplementing the Western-supplied Patriot and SAMP/T.

Shershen, by contrast, is clearly focused on the short-range layer.

Together, the programs illustrate the breadth of Ukraine’s emerging domestic air-defense effort: from relatively inexpensive systems built around repurposed air-to-air missiles to new, purpose-designed interceptors intended to replace or augment Soviet-era systems.

Ukraine’s experience with FrankenSAM has demonstrated the value of getting unconventional air defense combinations into service quickly.

Once fielded, Shershen, with its architecture capable of accepting different Soviet-origin and Western-made interceptors, and eventually a Ukrainian one, gives Ukraine another way to stretch its missile inventory and enhance its air defense capabilities.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post Ukraine’s New Shershen SAM Can Fire A Wild Mix Of Adapted Air-To-Air Missiles appeared first on TWZ.

Recently released pictures have highlighted a particularly interesting feature on the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Mustin: a piggy-backed point defense system with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of a 30mm chain gun. The Mk 38 Mod 4 Gun Weapon System (GWS) is interesting to examine as it offers significant boosts in firepower and other capabilities, including against drones, compared to preceding Mk 38 types.

Yesterday, Destroyer Squadron 15’s (DESRON 15) public affairs office released several pictures showing USS Mustin replenishing at sea in the Indian Ocean, including one highlighting the ship’s Mk 38 Mod 4 GWS (also sometimes confusingly referred to as a Machine Gun System, or MGS). DESRON 15 had put out another group of pictures late last month showing the weapon system being fired during routine training. Mustin was the first vessel in the Navy to receive Mod 4, and still looks to be the service’s only warship with this new version.

Though designated as a Mk 38 variant, the Mod 4 is fundamentally different from other Mk 38 types currently in service in the U.S. Navy, as well as several foreign naval arms.

“The Mk 38 Mod 4 Machine Gun System (MGS) is an upgrade … to address deficiencies in meeting Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) requirements,” the Navy has said in the past. “In addition, the upgrade will also improve performance against surface targets and maintain Anti-Terrorist / Force Protection capabilities.”

To take a step back quickly, the original Mk 38 Mod 0 was developed internally by the Navy in the late 1970s and was simply a manually operated deck-mounted 25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun with a maximum rate of fire of 180 rounds per minute. The M242 was entering U.S. Army service at around the same time as the main armament for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A product improved Mod 1 version was the first Mk 38 to actually enter serial production and began to be fitted to Navy ships in the late 1980s.

Following the deadly terrorist attack on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen in 2000, the Navy began to acquire Mk 38 Mod 2s, also known as the Typhoon Weapon System, from United Defense (later BAE Systems).

The Mod 2 “introduced remote-control operation and mount stabilization and allowed the weapon to maintain aim even as the ship pitched and rolled. It also added a new electro-optical/infrared sensor and a laser rangefinder, giving the system reliable day/night target performance,” according to the Navy. “Beyond sensors, Mod 2 brought improved ammunition handling and enhanced interfaces – resulting in faster and more reliable engagement. Testing showed it delivered two to three times the strike accuracy of its predecessor.”

The Mk 38 Mod 2 otherwise featured the same M242 gun as the Mod 0/1 types, feeding from a magazine on the mount that could be loaded with up to 168 rounds. It is worth noting here that this is less than a minute of total firing time at the weapon’s maximum rate of fire. However, it can also be fired in single-shot and three-round burst modes, as well as at a lower automatic rate of fire of 100 rounds per minute.

In the 2010s, the Navy began acquiring the Mk 38 Mod 3 from BAE Systems, which added a smaller 7.62x51mm Mk 52 Mod 0 chain gun feeding from a 750-round magazine to the complete weapon system. The Mk 52 is also a much faster-firing weapon than the M242, with a maximum rate of fire of 570 rounds per minute.

The Mod 3 “also incorporated an improved EO/IR sensor that provides 330-degree surveillance capability and multiple fields of view,” per the Navy. “This sensor is decoupled from the gun, allowing operators to scan independently of the weapon and reducing the chance of alerting an adversary that they’ve been detected.”

Over the years, Mk 38 1/2/3 types have been integrated on a wide array of Navy ships, including Ticonderoga class cruisers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Nimitz and Ford class aircraft carriers, as well as a host of other amphibious warfare ships and auxiliaries.

All of this brings us back to the Mk 38 Mod 4, the Navy’s designation for a version of the Seahawk DS30 series from MSI Defense Systems, which the service first began acquiring in the late 2010s. The Mk 38 Mod 4’s main weapon is a 30mm Mk 44 Mod 3 Bushmaster II chain gun. Like the M242, the Mk 44 also has single-shot and burst modes, as well as low and high fully automatic settings (100 and 200 rounds per minute, respectively). The Mk 44 is also found on versions of the Mk 46 Gun Weapon System installed on stealthy Zumwalt class destroyers and San Antonio class amphibious warfare ships. It is used in a variety of ground-based applications and on the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130J Ghostrider gunship aircraft. As mentioned, the Mk 38 Mod 4 also has a .50 caliber M2 machine gun with a rate of fire of around 500 rounds per minute. The system’s magazine capacity for each gun is not immediately clear.

The complete Mk 38 Mod 4 also comes with a new Mk 48 Mod 2 electro-optical sight system (EOSS), which is mounted separately on the ship, and a Mk 134 Mod 0 operator console for remote operation. Furthermore, the complete system is designed to be fully integrated with the Aegis Combat System on Arleigh Burke class destroyers like USS Mustin. The optical turret appears to replace the older EOSS system mounted atop the bridge that was primarily used to target the ship’s 5-inch gun. It isn’t clear how these new mounts are individually targeted simultaneously as they don’t appear to have their own optics. Radar targeting through Aegis would be a big advancement for at least some targets types, like drones. The older Mk 38s had their own individual FLIR systems. It’s still possible these new turrets could have a basic boresighted electro-optical system as well.

In a July 2022 test, a Mk 38 Mod 4 system “successfully identified, tracked and engaged both surface and aerial targets using live ammunition against fixed and moving targets,” according to the Navy. The event “also highlighted the enhanced fire-control chain, the 30 mm gun’s improved performance and its ability to counter new challenges.”

The USS Mustin received its Mk 38 Mod 4 in 2024 and, as noted, this destroyer still appears to be the only ship in the Navy with this new weapon system, for reasons that are not entirely clear. The service had signed a contract with MSI Defense for an initial low-rate production batch of 15 systems in 2023. Other versions of the Seahawk DS30 are in use today on several classes of naval vessels globally, including British Type 23 frigates.

“USS Mustin (DDG 89), an Arleigh Burke class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was the first U.S. Navy warship to receive the upgrade. [The Naval Surface Warfare Center] Dahlgren Division is now finalizing the configuration so the system can be introduced to a wider set of platforms as fleet requirements evolve,” according to an official news item from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) just this past February.

The Navy’s 2027 fiscal year budget request, released earlier this year, makes clear the plan is still to integrate the Mk 38 Mod 4 at least on all Flight IIA and Flight III subvariants of the Arleigh Burke destroyer. The Mk 38 Mod 4 is also set to be a feature on future U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, which will also have combat systems derived from Aegis.

All remaining Mk 38 Mod 2s in Navy service are being brought up to the Mod 3 standard, as well.

For the Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyers, specifically, the Mk 38 Mod 4 reflects broader efforts to improve and expand the shorter-range defensive capabilities of those ships, especially against growing drone threats. An increasing number of these destroyers are also being equipped with new anti-drone interceptors. In addition, the service is working to replace the 20mm Vulcan cannon-armed Mk 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS) on all subvariants in the class with different launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) to further bolster defenses against drones, as well as incoming missiles and other aerial threats.

In general, the Navy has been investing heavily in new counter-drone defenses for ships across its fleets in recent years. These efforts include laser and high-power microwave directed energy weapons, as well as various types of physical interceptors and electronic warfare systems. Lessons learned from the ongoing conflict with Iran, as well as recent operations in and around the Red Sea, together with observations from the war in Ukraine, have only underscored the increasingly critical need for additional layers of protection against uncrewed attackers in the air and at sea. Small crewed boats attacking in large groups remain a real threat, too.

Mustin may not be the only Navy warship equipped with the Mk 38 Mod 4 for much longer, if the system has not already started finding its way at least onto more Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Navy Destroyer Packs New ‘Piggy-Backed’ Point Defense System That Combines 30mm And .50 Cal Guns appeared first on TWZ.

Ukrainian crews operating Australian-supplied M1A1 Abrams tanks say the battlefield has become so saturated with Russian drones that their tanks cannot currently be used in combat, but they reject the idea that main battle tanks have become forever obsolete.

Since receiving these tanks last year, the crews, serving with Ukraine’s 425th Separate Assault Regiment “Skala,” have used the Abrams in two combat operations in the fight for Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistics hub and part of a defensive belt of towns in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. They recounted their experiences to Hromadske, an independent media channel in Ukraine.

Fighting around Pokrovsk

The first major deployment described by the crews took place in December of last year, when Abrams tanks were used to support assault groups entering Pokrovsk.

The crewmember with the callsign Kent described moving into the city behind a mine-clearing tank and ahead of two infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) carrying assault troops, during a mission that was deliberately aggressive.

“Since a tank is a priority target — my task was to draw their attention, while our infantry dismounted and moved in successfully.”

The Abrams was also assigned three target points to engage along the route.

“We went right in there, poured it on, and drove back out,” he recalled.

A video showing the 425th Separate Assault Regiment in action in August 2025, soon after receiving the Abrams:

The second operation, on March 31, involved an attempt to enter and hold an industrial area near Pokrovsk to help block Russian movement toward Hryshyne, a contested village in the district.

The operation was prepared for more than two weeks. Ukrainian forces conducted reconnaissance flights, examined difficult sections of the planned routes, and provided crews with extensive video and imagery.

“They knew every meter of the route,” another of the unit’s commanders, with the callsign Kubik, said.

Weather was considered essential. The Ukrainians waited for fog and rain, hoping to limit the effectiveness of Russian drones.

“Without the right weather we wouldn’t have been able to pull off operations like that,” Kubik said.

The operation nevertheless resulted in the destruction of four out of five armored vehicles, some of which are seen in the video embedded below.

Russia's Rubicon Drone Center FPV drones destroyed a Ukrainian assault group near Pokrovsk, hitting an M1A1 Abrams tank, M1117 APC and BMP-2 as the unit tried to advance near Hryshyne under fog cover. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ZzE52qAYxp

— NOELREPORTS (@NOELreports) April 1, 2026

The commander acknowledged that the Russian side may have had advance knowledge of the operation.

“I can’t rule out the possibility that the enemy knew our plan,” he said.

His Abrams was not immediately destroyed. According to the crew, it completed its task and the assault troops dismounted before the weather changed.

“Once the fog lifted, they started working on it with an FPV drone,” the commander said.

Why use tanks at all?

The losses prompted criticism from Ukrainian military commentators, particularly after footage of the destroyed vehicles was published.

However, the crews defend the decision to use armored vehicles for the missions. According to the men of the Skala interviewed, the alternative was often to send infantry over several miles on foot while carrying weapons, ammunition, water, and other supplies.

“That takes more time,” Kubik explained. “And the enemy isn’t standing still — the enemy is moving toward them.”

Australia-supplied M1A1 Abrams AIM main battle tank in service of the Ukrainian 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skala."

The tanks of such type recently saw combat in the area of Pokrovsk. pic.twitter.com/qhjSyGbhH6

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) December 23, 2025

The argument that infantry could simply move more stealthily on foot also has limitations.

“Every day the Mavic drones are flying, the fixed-wing drones are flying,” he said. “No fog, guys are visible.”

Combined with IFVs, the Abrams can provide the ability to rapidly move troops while simultaneously delivering heavy direct fire against enemy positions and offering substantial protection to its crew.

The crews argue that this capability remains worthwhile even when the tank itself may eventually be lost.

One commander was asked whether deploying a roughly $5-million tank makes sense if a single sortie can result in its destruction.

“Yes, of course it makes sense to deploy it,” he replied.

“First and foremost — it saves the lives of the crew inside it.”

Russian forces captured a relatively lightly damaged M1A1SA Abrams main battle tank operated by the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade in the Pokrovsk direction.

The tank is equipped with added cage armor, as well as Kontakt and ARAT ERA. pic.twitter.com/mHyKk1xNRY

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) October 27, 2024

A tank under attack by drones

The Ukrainian crews repeatedly highlighted the Abrams’ accuracy and survivability.

“What are the biggest advantages of the Abrams?” Kent was asked.

“Accuracy.”

Its biggest disadvantage, he said, is equally obvious on a modern battlefield: “It’s very tall — and very large — so it’s hard to conceal.”

A video showing a U.S.-supplied Abrams under attack from Russian FPV drones:

An Abrams tank withstands 9 FPV drones hits. Eventually, the tank was destroyed, but the tank crew successfully survived. pic.twitter.com/4NBKdg2zmW

— PS01 □ (@PStyle0ne1) July 7, 2024

Kent described surviving an engagement in which his tank was struck repeatedly while on the move.

“More than 20 drones hit me,” he said of one operation into Pokrovsk.

He attributed the Abrams’ survival to the combination of its armor and additional anti-drone protection fitted to the vehicle.

“All of it together is effective,” he said.

He pointed to fairly basic modifications including rubber strips and a foldable wire cage mounted on the turret, as additional layers of protection against drone attacks.

“A drone doesn’t hit the actual penetrating element directly — it just can’t reach it,” he explained. “It hits the rubber, and then the blast wave travels from there.”

Even with their tanks festooned with explosive reactive armor (ERA) bricks, the crews acknowledge that such protection has limits.

US-supplied M1A1 Abrams tank in service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with added Kontakt-1 ERA on the frontal hull and standard ARAT ERA on the sides. pic.twitter.com/PC2kDfxefO

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) May 21, 2024

Kent also noted that the Abrams was still missing the ‘hedgehog’-type protective coverings that have been seen on Russian tanks.

“They also protect very well. An effective thing,” he said.

For now, the drone threat has led the regiment to keep its Abrams out of combat, as we will return to later.

The Abrams as a machine

The crews’ assessment of the Abrams included praise for its mobility, roomy interior, gun, and fire-control system.

Kubik said he had personally driven an Abrams to 50 miles per hour cross-country.

“The engine is an absolute beast,” he added.

The tank can also rapidly perform a pivot turn, which the crews consider particularly useful when maneuvering in confined spaces. Despite its prodiguous weight, it only rarely becomes bogged down after the kind of very heavy snow-melt that effects all vehicles on the battlefield.

Loading a 120mm M1028 canister cartridge into an M1A1 AIM Abrams main battle tank of the tank battalion of the 425th Assault Regiment. pic.twitter.com/tMd8QcROQe

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 (@TheDeadDistrict) June 21, 2026

Its disadvantages include its demanding maintenance requirements. The running gear was described as particularly sensitive, with crews inspecting, lubricating, and replacing components after every sortie.

Fuel consumption is another major burden. The crew cited roughly 400 to 700 liters (106 to 185 gallons) per 100 kilometers (62 miles) depending on terrain and operating conditions.

“On asphalt it burns about 400 liters,” one said. In boggy terrain, consumption can reach “700 liters or more.”

The Abrams thirsty gas turbine engine and extreme logistical demands have always been a criticism of the platform.

The crews said the vehicle’s ability to operate on different fuels is useful, although diesel provides the best engine-hour performance in their experience. Prior to delivery, the gas turbine engines of the tanks were reconfigured to use diesel fuel instead of the standard JP-8 aviation kerosene, according to earlier reports.

They also praised the Abrams’ protected ammunition storage and crew space compared with Soviet-designed tanks.

The version operated by the Ukrainians is an M1A1 rather than the latest Abrams configuration, with less sophisticated electronics than newer variants. It also lacks the classified armor found on its U.S. Army counterpart.

“For me — as a tanker — this configuration, what we have right now, is more than enough,” Kubik said. “The sight is absolutely excellent. The gun is also great.”

Abrams destroys a house with Russian infantry in the Pokrovsk direction. pic.twitter.com/StUoZoMTO3

— MAKS 26 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) August 25, 2024

Waiting for a solution to the drone problem

The interview ultimately presents a more complicated picture than the declaration that tanks are obsolete on the Ukrainian battlefield.

At the time of writing, at least 25 Abrams have been confirmed visually to have been destroyed, damaged, or abandoned in Ukrainian service. This is from a total of 31 provided by the United States and 49 from Australia.

“For now, we’re not using them further — there’s no way to,” Kubik said. “The enemy has developed their drone component very heavily, and for now we don’t have the means to counter that.”

While tanks remain exceptionally powerful direct-fire and protected mobility platforms, the proliferation of inexpensive uncrewed aircraft has made operating them increasingly difficult.

M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks of the 425th Assault Regiment .
The reinforced upper glacis and turret roofs are clearly visible. pic.twitter.com/Sn9h8OWZ9P

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 (@TheDeadDistrict) June 21, 2026

“If someone had told me, as a tanker, back in 2022: ‘Take this — we’re giving you an Abrams, we’ll give you time to train and you’ll fight in it,’” Kubik said, “I would never have climbed out of it.”

“I’d only be saying: ‘Bring me shells. I’ll drive non-stop wherever needed, arrive and work.’”

As it stands, reconnaissance drones can find the Abrams, FPV drones can attack it, and persistent surveillance makes concealment difficult. Experience has shown that without more effective counter-drone capabilities, even a heavily protected tank can eventually be overwhelmed.

But Kubik believes that will change.

“The day will come when one of our bright minds figures out some excellent solution against drones — and we’ll start using them again.”

Asked whether the era of tanks is over, his answer was unequivocal.

“It’s not over … They’re just waiting it out for now, biding their time. Writing off tanks — in my opinion — is still too early.”

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post How Russian Drones Forced Ukraine To Park Its M1 Abrams Tanks appeared first on TWZ.

As spades went into the ground to signal the start of construction of the new Building 47 at Lockheed Martin’s Munitions Production Center in Troy, Alabama, it marked a significant development in accelerating production of the company’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptor, better known as THAAD. The expansion of factory space in Troy is a key element of the company’s $8-9-billion commitment to expand its munitions production footprint across the United States.

The Department of War’s Acquisition Transformation Strategy is part of a long-term plan that signals clear demand for critical munitions and it enables industry to confidently invest in facilities and workforce development, along with supply chain expansion and advanced manufacturing capabilities. In addition to enlarging the facility in Troy, Lockheed Martin is also growing its plant in Camden, Arkansas, which is another site that’s vital for building more munitions at a faster pace.

“My job is to interface and collaborate with the Department of War in achieving the call to action to produce these critical munitions, not only at speed but also at scale, multiplying the current production rates by two, three, or even four times the current rates,” Dan Nimblett, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Munitions Acceleration Integration told TWZ on the ground in Troy during the groundbreaking event.

“Fundamentally what’s occurred changes how acquisition works [with] long term demand agreements. These long term procurement agreements enable Lockheed Martin and our supply base to make the necessary investments with confidence of the future demand. This allows us to make the investments not only in our people and our facilities, but in the technology necessary to build [these munitions] at a scale and a speed that’s relevant to the threat today,” explained Nimblett.

Lockheed Martin was the first company in the U.S. defense industry to announce a framework agreement with the DoW for munitions acceleration of high-demand missiles – initially tripling production capacity of the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptor, followed by a second agreement to quadruple the production capacity of advanced THAAD interceptors. These two defensive missiles are cornerstones of a layered air and missile defense system, and both have been integrated together via Joint All-Domain Operations, including with the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

In response to the DoW’s call to action, the company has already invested more than $2 billion in its production facilities and in the related tooling, its key suppliers, and its workforce in order to accelerate production rates.

Lockheed Martin plans to effectively double the factory footprint in Troy and dramatically increase the workforce. “We’re going to increase that [workforce] by drawing in college students, high school students, veterans, everybody’s welcome,” explains Jason Reynolds, vice president and general manager for integrated air and missile defense. “When they come to Lockheed Martin, they receive training, they get opportunity, and because these programs are on a ramp and in production in such high demand, this is where you come to start your career and you [can] work here for a long time.”

Lockheed Martin currently employs around 1,100 workers at its Camden site, but this is also growing. The Camden training center is seen as being critical in providing the swift increase in skilled operators needed to support this acceleration. “We work closely with the state of Arkansas as well on looking at what else we can do in the community and the infrastructure in that community to support people moving, hopefully into Camden as we ramp up,” says Reynolds.

“People here [in Troy] really know their work matters. It’s meaningful for both the community as well as for our national defense. So, we’re really proud of our employees and we’re on a growth trajectory. We’re hiring and we want as many qualified people to come join our team as possible.”

The Camden site is also accelerating its work on the long-range Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which is also set to quadruple production over the next few years. Reynolds added that building missiles faster using automation and advanced manufacturing technologies, plus increasing the production line capacity, are some of the vital means for success.

“PAC-3 MSE and THAAD are the most capable air defense interceptors on the planet. They’re in extreme demand [and] we’re doing everything possible,” says Reynolds. “With PAC-3, we have been doubling that production over the last four years and now, like I said, we’re going to triple it. We’re working very carefully with our suppliers, with the U.S. government and with our partners and allies all around the world to get all the parts in and get them into factories like you see behind us today to assemble them and get them out to the warfighter as quickly as possible.”

Another way Lockheed Martin is accelerating the delivery of advanced air defense capabilities is the through the introduction this summer of the PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or PAC-3 ACE. This new missile leverages the PAC-3 fire-control system and provides for full integration with the Patriot weapon suite.

The main differentiator of PAC-3 ACE is that it would be produced at less than half the unit cost of MSE and first flight could occur within 18 months. A core part of the rapid fielding strategy is an international, joint-development model. Lockheed Martin is partnering with both American and European industry, sharing production lines, supply chains and expertise.

Lockheed Martin says PAC-3  ACE provides a “cost-effective, multi-threat solution.” The interceptor is engineered to engage a broad spectrum of air-breathing threats, cruise missiles, and both short and medium-range ballistic missiles. By offering a low-cost “kill” per-engagement, it is designed to address the current climate that demands deeper ammunition reserves without compromising on performance.

The keys to munitions acceleration

This year, Lockheed Martin has made significant progress in a series of production acceleration projects for munitions programs under its Missiles and Fire Control division. “I was supposed to retire last year. I’m here because this is the most exciting time in the 30 years I’ve been in this industry,” says Dan Nimblett. “These long-term agreements provide us the certainty to enable us to make these investments.”

“What recent conflicts have demonstrated is that Lockheed Martin and the American defense industrial base never lost the technological edge. The technology and the capability has always been there – we have the best systems in the world. We’ve proven that through real world performance.”

Nimblett explained that Lockheed Martin’s supply chain is following suit, and that they are all now investing in similar ways to ensure they meet the demand signals. “We’re evaluating how we produce and increase additive manufacturing and robotics. We’re also looking at how we develop, which I think is a fundamental part of getting capability into the warfighters’ hands at a speed and scale that’s relevant to the threat.”

Having received Milestone C approval from the U.S. Army in July 2025, PrSM manufacturing has relied on a high level of automation. PrSM was engineered from the start for automated, robot-driven production – automating tasks once done by hand – and that early-stage streamlining is paying dividends as Lockheed Martin seeks to accelerate output.

“We have a lot of robotics built into our munitions production,” explains Gaylia Campbell, vice president, Tactical Missiles. “A lot of times we use robotics to help increase the safety of the assembly, like an explosive charge that has to be integrated into a munition, and we have a robotic arm that places that and tests the placement. We also robotically paint and coat [PrSM]. So, we have a lot of robotics already in Camden and that’s really going to help us with this ramp-up in production – the fact that so much of it is [already] automated.”

Campbell emphasizes that PrSM entered production with a mindset of acceleration. “We got PrSM through preliminary and critical design reviews, and into first flight in times roughly half of what it would normally have taken us. We’ve been amazingly successful on all these flights. Those early [test] flights went off one after the other during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when there were a lot of challenges for all of us in our daily lives, and yet we were able to continue to fly and prove the operational performance.”

Lockheed Martin is reshaping the munitions supply chain with an unprecedented slate of manufacturing initiatives that pull together new facilities, strategic partnerships, and workforce development. The company is also expanding a number of its other production facilities, such as a $60-million investment in its complex in Archbald, Pennsylvania, that will add 700 jobs in support of high‑priority programs including PrSM, THAAD, PAC‑3, and Apache sensors. In Orlando, Florida, three legacy paint bays have been merged into a high‑performance shop that can retool a work cell in hours rather than weeks, while Ocala’s new Progressive Work Smart Assembly Line has cut seeker and mission control unit build times by roughly 50 percent.

A partnership with General Motors will bring high‑rate commercial manufacturing expertise into Lockheed Martin’s production processes, and the new Rapid Fielding Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, is tasked to reduce traditional manufacturing development timelines. What once took years of design, testing and tooling is aimed to be prototyped, fabricated and validated in a matter of months.

Echoing endorsement of the DoW’s initiative, Campbell underscores that knowing what the demand signal will be is a critical differentiator when it comes to production ramp-up. “We can plan for some of those really critical rare earth minerals that we need, the batteries for example in our munitions, we need certain rare earth minerals for that. We need to know the total demand signal and that means we can negotiate with the suppliers and guarantee that we have access. That can really help us accelerate.”

To support the wider munitions efforts Lockheed Martin is also investing in solid rocket motor development and production, as well as lower-tier parts that go into solid rocket motors. “We’re working with different suppliers to develop new sources of supply for solid rocket motors,” says Campbell. “We’re investigating heavily right now in designing and prototyping several motors that we plan to test and take to production, and that really will develop a whole new supply chain and will really be critical for all munitions production.”

Having a five-year contract instead of annual contracts allows the manufacturer to have far more buying power to secure sub-components for a far better price point. “I can go and invest. Invest in more capacity, invest in my supplier’s capacity,” explains Campbell.

“Production is all about velocity. Keeping the line moving and not having to stop because we don’t have a part. Being able to order bigger quantities of things up front is really huge when it comes to acceleration.”

Contact the author: Jamie.Hunter@teamrecurrent.io

The post Site Expansions Underpin Lockheed Martin’s Munitions Production Ramp appeared first on TWZ.

Discover the new available training paths for taxation and for customs officers on the EU Learning Potal.

Two curricula modules for taxation and for customs officers from candidate and potential candidate countries have been released on the DG TAXUD Customs, Tax & CBAM EU Learning Portal. These modules are gateways that guide and provide direct access to targeted training resources designed for taxation officers or customs officers in candidate and potential candidate countries.  

The modules feature links to selected courses of the training catalogue of the portal, displayed in a pre-determined order, to provide an extensive knowledge on the EU customs and taxation acquis and its implementation. Taxation and customs officers can also select a specific course according to their competence and/or need. 

Access to the Courses 

• Training curriculum for taxation officers from candidate and potential candidate countries 
• Training curriculum for customs officers from candidate and potential candidate countries

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is set to sign long-delayed agreements with five oil refineries, unlocking more than $6 billion in planned upgrades to modernize aging plants and cut reliance on fuel imports, officials said. But industry warnings that changes to the financial framework could derail the projects overshadowed the announcement. The agreements with Pak-Arab Refinery Ltd., Pakistan ... Read more

The post Pakistan to sign long-delayed refinery deals unlocking more than $6 billion in planned upgrades appeared first on BOL News.

Greek Police is set to mobilize all possible modern means in order to solve the one problem that torments not only commuters twice per day but anyone trying to move within the 4-million-people capital Athens: the endless traffic jams. The new “integrated operational system for traffic management”, developed by the Hellenic Police and termed “Traffic […]

The post Drones, cameras and AI to help manage traffic across Athens appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

According to Nepal's Disaster Management Authority, at least 639 people remain trapped at damaged hydropower facilities.

The post Nepal flood death toll surpasses 1,000 as rescue efforts intensify appeared first on BOL News.

The minister said a telemedicine center would be launched at PIMS to help reduce the burden of patients.

The post Mustafa Kamal reviews fire safety, cooling systems at PIMS appeared first on BOL News.