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The European Council has announced that it is sending EU military personnel directly to Ukraine as part of its ongoing train and advise mission. 

However, whereas this program - called the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM) - previously only took place outside of Ukraine, it will now be extended to Ukrainian territory.

In a Monday press release, the Council confirmed that it is extending the mandate of the EUMAM until November 15, 2028, with a budget of nearly 300 million (or $334 million) - but added this huge new development: 

"The Council also decided to establish a presence in Ukraine to ensure direct and effective coordination with the Ukrainian military authorities," the press release from Brussels said.

This is a huge provocation aimed at Russia, given that Moscow's position has long been that European soldiers would be fair game for Russian strikes.

While it's believed that Western forces and certainly intelligence officers been on the ground throughout the conflict, especially French forces, this has never been done in an official and public capacity.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed this change at a press conference Tuesday while speaking from Abu Dhabi at the trilateral Russia-Ukraine-US talks:

"Europe's plan is quite simple, and they make no secret of it: as soon as a ceasefire is reached, they intend to move 'stabilization forces' into the territory controlled by the Kiev regime."

Indeed it seems Brussels is trying to create leverage for inself by being more directly 'involved' on the ground in Ukraine.

Already the EUMAM Ukraine program has boasted of training more than 100,000 soldiers since it was begun in October 2022. 

But this has been done in external countries like main host nations Germany, Poland, or else Denmark - the latter where pilots have been trained. Other host training partners have been Britain and the United States, with bases in Texas and Arizona also featuring fighter pilot training.

This new development could serve to hinder negotiations which are ongoing in Abu Dhabi, and the Kremlin representatives are certainly expected to make more noise about this. The EU has desperately been trying to get a seat at the table of the Trump-backed talks.

On Monday evening, Britain's grid operator paid the Langage gas power station near Plymouth the equivalent of £1.4 million an hour, according to market transparency data cited by the Telegraph, as low wind output ran into a third day.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) was paying around £1,500 per megawatt hour to at least three gas plants to cover the evening peak, about 10 times the average. Langage, Rye House in Hertfordshire and Seabank near Bristol collected similar sums between 3:30pm and 5pm. At that rate, 90 minutes at Langage comes to roughly £2.1 million.

Neso issued an electricity margin notice at 7:17pm on Sunday for the 6am to 11am window on Monday, flagging a 1,388 MW shortfall against a 808 MW contingency requirement and asking generators to say what extra capacity they could bring. After a 4am review the shortfall was cut to about 500 MW, the Guardian reported, and the notice was withdrawn Monday morning. Neso called it "a routine and precautionary measure" and said, "This is not a warning of power cuts, there is no risk to customer electricity supplies."

Notices like this have become far more common with seven issued so far this year, against one for the whole of 2025, the Telegraph reported. They were once reserved for cold winter evenings. One on Sept. 28 flagged a 1,400 MW shortfall between 4pm and 7pm that was later cut to 104 MW and cancelled, and another on Oct. 6 had the margin falling 1.88 GW. 

A Neso spokesman said the number of notices "can vary significantly from year to year and there have been comparable periods of EMN use in the past," calling them "a routine operational tool."

Energy analyst Kathryn Porter, quoted by the Telegraph, said a notice for a Monday morning was "unusual." 

"EMNs normally cover the evening peak, not the morning," she said. "The question is, what happens if the modest wind recovery forecast for tomorrow evening is delayed, or if demand is higher than forecast - given the size of Neso's forecast errors, when margins are this thin there could be trouble."

In fact, the bill for a bad day can run far higher than Monday's. 

When a margin notice hit in January 2025 with a 1,700 MW shortfall, Neso paid up to £5,750 per megawatt hour to the gas-fired Rye House and Connah's Quay plants, and about £17 million went to gas responders through the balancing mechanism, Solar Power Portal reported. Octopus Energy founder Greg Jackson called it "another example of our malfunctioning energy system," and the company urged Neso to "pay people, not power plants."

Shadow Energy Secretary Andrew Bowie said: "With barely any wind, it's gas keeping Britain's lights on. 

Yet Labour is now legislating to ban new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences." He added: "We need gas, but Labour would rather we import it than produce our own." 

The Nuclear Industry Association's Tom Greatrex used the episode to say "Britain cannot afford to lose its nuclear capacity."

Neso's own early outlook for this winter puts the de-rated margin at 5.5 GW, or 8.8% of peak demand, and expects "some tight days, mainly in mid and late January, that could require the use of system notices."

Authored by former CIA officer Larry Johnson

F. Scott Fitzgerald said the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still function. By that standard, Donald Trump spent Sunday and Monday proving he is a genius.

In the space of 48 hours, the President told us the war with Iran is winding down and that the military is “locked and loaded.” Strikes are “highly unlikely,” and he has picked out 38 bridges to blow up. A deal is close, and the blockade should stay. I have spent much of my career reading intelligence reports written to please several masters at once. I have never seen anyone do it this well in public, with no notes.

Meet Peace Trump

Peace Trump gave an interview to 60 Minutes on Sunday. He said he was “not looking” to escalate the war: “I don’t think there’s any reason to.” He told CNN that new strikes were “highly unlikely” to be necessary. He conceded that voters “didn’t like the war” and were angry about gas prices. Asked about JD Vance’s post blaming the war for the midterm rout, he said, “I don’t disagree with it.”

On Monday, after a meeting with Qatar’s prime minister, Peace Trump was even sunnier. “We are seeing positive momentum toward an end to this Conflict,” he wrote. Then he walked into the White House briefing room and announced that the Iranians were “talking very politely,” that there was a “good chance” of a deal, and that the war was “ending quickly.”

That is a man who has read the election returns.

Meet War Trump

War Trump appears in the same interviews, sometimes in the same paragraph. In that same CNN call, he explained that a deal “depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement.” If not, US forces have identified 38 Iranian bridges “that we can knock down in literally one hour.” On Truth Social, he announced that Task Force Iron Gate, the operation to choke off Iranian weapons shipments, “is in full force and effect,” right alongside the naval blockade.

In Washington, War Trump declared, “we are locked and loaded and ready to go.” He explained that strikes were “quite unlikely” only because Gulf allies “would prefer the status quo.” The status quo, for anyone keeping score, is a naval blockade of Iran. He insisted American troops must stay in the region or our allies “would be hurt.” He also assured us Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon,” a threat he says he has already eliminated, yet apparently one that requires a permanent garrison.

And on the war itself? It was a “very good decision,” historically speaking. “Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not.” It is the first time I have heard a commander in chief ask history to grade his war on a curve.

Five ways to make it all add up

In fairness to the President, I have tried to reconcile these statements. Here are the best explanations I could come up with.

1. Schrödinger’s war. The war is both ending and continuing until someone opens the box. The box, presumably, is the 38 bridges.
2. The war is over, militarily. It is merely continuing navally, economically and on Qeshm Island, where Iranian authorities say US strikes hit overnight on Sunday. Washington has not acknowledged them, which is one way to keep a war “highly unlikely.”
3. The blockade is peace. If Gulf allies “prefer the status quo,” then the status quo must be peace. Tankers stranded, Hormuz choked and diesel at $6 a gallon is simply what peace looks like now.
4. Iran is polite, and Rubio is rude. Trump says the Iranians are “talking very politely.” His own Secretary of State said Sunday night that the two sides are not “at the verge of a breakthrough,” that Iran’s demands are “unacceptable” and that the talks have not been “very productive.” Perhaps Marco is being cc’d on a different email thread.
5. Vance was right, and wrong. Trump said, “I don’t disagree” with Vance’s verdict that the war cost Republicans the election. He also told reporters that “a lot of people did not like Vance’s comments on Iran.” Both can be true if the people who did not like them include the President.

My favorite came last. Asked why he has been predicting for months that the war would end soon, Trump denied it. “I made the claim that they won’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. Then, in the same appearance, he repeated that the war was “ending quickly.” That is not a contradiction. It is a tradition.

The audiences, not the policy

The serious explanation is less amusing. Trump is not describing one policy. He is talking to four audiences at once.

• American voters fired his party last Tuesday over the war and gas prices. They get Peace Trump: momentum, politeness, a war “ending quickly.”
• Tehran gets War Trump: locked and loaded, 38 bridges, the blockade tightening under Iron Gate. That is leverage, or at least an attempt at it.
• The Gulf monarchies are terrified of another round of Iranian missiles on their oil terminals. They get the “status quo,” meaning no new strikes but no lifting of the blockade either.
• Benjamin Netanyahu, who is reportedly calling Trump every day to push him to resume the war, gets the reassurance that Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon” and that American forces are staying put.

The trouble with talking to everyone is that everyone hears everything. Tehran heard Peace Trump too, and concluded that he wants out. Mohsen Rezaei, fresh from three hours with Putin, told Washington to “fold your hand” and dismissed the whole business as “imaginary” negotiations. Iran’s chief negotiator accused Israel of dragging the United States deeper into the war. Those are not the words of a side that feels pressured to sign “a very strong agreement” this week.

Next week, Trump expects to meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in China, with Iran on the agenda. Both men will arrive knowing exactly which Trump they would prefer to deal with, and how to encourage him.

Pick One

There is an old military maxim that you cannot be strong everywhere at once. The same is true of messages. A president who threatens and pleads in the same breath does not project strength. He projects indecision, and every adversary at the table can tell the difference.

So here is my modest proposal for the President. Pick one Trump and stick with him. If it is Peace Trump, lift the blockade, take Qatar’s mediation seriously and stop counting bridges. If it is War Trump, explain to the voters who just fired the Republican Congress why they should pay $6 a gallon for diesel for another winter. What he cannot do much longer is be both.

Until then, the official US position on the war with Iran appears to be that it is ending quickly, it was a very good decision, it may not be a good decision today, it is highly unlikely to resume, and we are locked and loaded. Fitzgerald would be impressed. The Iranians are merely taking notes.

Microsoft has applied for a patent on an AI system that would rewrite what a speaker says in a live video feed, and redraw their lips to match, with the changes tailored to each viewer's profile. The filing, published Oct. 29, is an application, not a product, and the company has announced no plans to build it.

The application, US 2026/0341309 A1, is titled "Near Real-Time Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enhancement of Video or Augmented Reality (AR) Presentations of Live Events," according to IBTimes. Microsoft Technology Licensing filed it April 29, 2025, and lists David Callaghan and Dinesh Kumar as inventors.

Per the patent tracker Patentlyze, the first claim describes an AI agent that picks "one or more spoken words to modify according to a first set of parameters," with the choice "based on a profile of a user." A generative AI system then swaps the words in the audio, smooths the edit and generates new video frames so the speaker's mouth matches the new words.

Which words change depends on who is watching. Tbreak reports the profile could hold a viewer's age, languages, region, religion, ethnicity, education, and voice or video samples. Two people watching the same broadcast could hear two different versions of what was said, as Dexerto points out.

The uses listed are mostly mundane: stripping filler words like "um," fixing mispronunciations and stutters, replacing slang, translating speech the viewer doesn't understand, and bleeping profanity and "offensive words." The system is also described as pulling replacement words from an internet search, which Dexerto and Tbreak say amounts to "instant fact-checking." That one is the least mundane. Software that decides a speaker's statement was wrong and quietly substitutes what it thinks they should have said is a different thing from a profanity filter.

The filing calls the process "near-real-time," which it ties to the few-second delay broadcasters already use for manual profanity filtering, with one to 10 seconds given as an example. The patent mentions lectures, award ceremonies, sporting events and live TV, and says the software could run on phones, tablets, cameras and AR glasses. Another claim would turn long recordings into shorter summary videos built partly from newly generated footage.

Only one dependent claim addresses the obvious problem. It keeps the unaltered audio and video as "ground truth," Patentlyze says, and that is the only claim that preserves the original. Nothing in the coverage says viewers would be told a feed had been edited, or could see the original.

Status is murky. The patent examiner raised objections on July 29, 2026, and the first review rejected the claims as filed, according to Tbreak and Patentlyze. That is a routine step that usually leads to amended claims, and some outlets describe the application as further along than that. Microsoft did not respond to Futurism's request for comment, and its shipping Teams Interpreter translates audio only and does not touch the speaker's face.

Microsoft is not alone in the idea. Tbreak notes Sony has a similar patent for AI that replaces sensitive moments in games using parent-set rules. Critics quoted in the coverage worry that edited footage could be mistaken for an accurate record of what was said; IBTimes says that matters to journalists, broadcasters and anyone using video as evidence. Real-time face and voice swapping is already a scammer's tool, and a patent that treats a live speaker's words as editable per viewer shows where the large AI companies are looking.

Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke says President Trump has until Jan. 3 to restart the war with Iran, and that Benjamin Netanyahu is pressing him to do it "several times a day, every day." Crooke, whose wrote last month about the war's cost, told the Daniel Davis Deep Dive that the nuclear option for Iran's Pickaxe Mountain "may not actually do anything," and that Iran will not negotiate until seven conditions are met.

Host Daniel Davis opened the interview days after what he called "a stinging rebuke" of Republicans at the midterm polls, noting that Trump had met his war council the day before and that a third carrier strike group was about 10 days out. His question to Crooke was whether the election should have ended talk of renewed war. Crooke called the idea "counterintuitive" for Trump, and what followed was a case that the pressure to strike now is coming from the calendar.

"He's Only Got Until The 3rd Of January"

"He's only got until the 3rd of January," Crooke said of Trump. "And after the 3rd of January, it's going to be much more difficult for him to start a war because the new Congress will have assembled." Netanyahu's clock is shorter, in his telling: he "came out badly bruised from the elections," and "He rings him up or people close to Trump several times a day, every day, asking for war because Netanyahu sees this as his only salvation." Crooke's reason is that "The only way that he can produce a unity government is to say we're at war." Crooke gave no evidence for the calls.

Israel's politics are moving the other way. As we reported, Israel's president has since given Netanyahu's rival, Gadi Eisenkot, the first chance to form a government, with Arab-led parties backing him. Crooke does not expect an Eisenkot government to want Trump's war: "Now, Eisenkot, would he accept a war? I think no, is the answer to that." He said Eisenkot and the chief of general staff "have all said there is no reason to go to an early war with Iran." But he called Eisenkot "just as hard as any of them" on Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon.

The gap in between is where Crooke sees the danger. A caretaker Netanyahu, he said, can still act: "Then he can launch a war legally and the IDF, even if they disagree with it and oppose it, will have to comply." A war would also solve his coalition problem, since "he'll immediately call for unity government and he'll probably get one." Crooke noted that Israel's new Knesset assembles Nov. 9 and that Eisenkot plans a vote on an investigation into Oct. 7, which he called "toxic for Netanyahu." Crooke's conclusion (at 18 minute mark): "So the window is shut. So what we're dealing with is really a last desperate throw of the dice."

A 400-Kiloton Bomb Against A Granite Mountain

Asked about his main concerns, Crooke went through Trump's options, starting with the one that has been discussed since Trump locked his crosshairs: a nuclear strike. The main nuclear bunker buster the United States has, he said, is the [B61-11], which he put at 400 kilotons and described as "a dumb bomb," unguided, dropped from above "and hope that it lands roughly in the right place." Reports put the bomb's maximum yield at 340 to 400 kilotons, and carriage on a B-2.

Crooke's doubt is that it would not reach what it is aimed at. "Well, if that goes off, first of all, it may not actually do anything, because granite is well known. It absorbs that sort of vibration, an explosive vibration." Of the depth, he said "even the experts don't know, but maybe it can penetrate 30 meters," short of the roughly 100 meters he put the target at. If it does explode, he said, "I think for an area around it, for some kilometers, it will be possibly lethal to human beings."

The smaller B61-12, which he put at 50 kilotons, needs an F-35, and he doubted it has the range from Jordan without refueling. The B-2 that would carry the larger bomb would be vulnerable on its route, he said, since stealth "will only work for a small part of a journey." "What happens if the Iranians shoot it down? Then they'll have a ready-made nuclear bomb in their possession."

Crooke said the argument in Washington is that a nuclear blast would be Hiroshima, and "the Iranians would immediately wave the white flag." He rejected it: "the Iranians would not ever accept a nuclear attack." Conventional strikes, he noted, have already been tried twice. "It didn't bring down the state. It didn't cause an uprising." He called the land-invasion options "pretty, you know, crazy." On why Trump might go ahead anyway, he offered the Greek idea of tragedy: Trump and Netanyahu "have no choice but to make it happen because that is their nature."

No Negotiations Until Seven Conditions

Mojtaba Khamenei, as state media report, said the United States' power had fallen. In Davis's reading: "the declining power and hegemony of the United States has suffered an irreversible fall in both dimensions of its power, its hard military power and its international soft power. The process of the U.S.'s collapse has accelerated." The Leader warned that anyone who thinks "by making concessions to the U.S. they can persuade it to abandon its hostility, they're gravely mistaken." Davis took it as a sign Iran would carry out the strikes on infrastructure it has threatened.

Crooke tied it to Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who met Vladimir Putin in Moscow and delivered the Leader's message, as Iranian media reported. "Rezaei made it very clear that Iran stands exactly behind its position, which is no negotiations until those seven prerequisites that are in the memorandum of understanding that Trump signed at Versailles are implemented." That is Crooke's description of the document; we could not find the Versailles memorandum. The conditions must come first, he said, "not done on a sliding scale, not done one by one, but done before negotiations can start. And the nuclear issue is not first, but last."

He added that, in his view, Iran has reorganized for war: the course of the war is "run entirely by the IRGC through the National Security Council," with President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi there "to give their advice." Even Pezeshkian, of a faction that favors talks, "doesn't see any point in negotiating with the United States," he said. As to Russia, Crooke said there was no readout, and guessed that "Putin advised the Iranians that deterrence was not going to be sufficient to stop the prospect of war."

If the U.S. strikes, Crooke said, Iran will answer beyond the region. As we noted, Khamenei has warned of "no geographical limits." In Crooke's words, "they are going to go after things like data centers. They're going to go after also maybe undersea cables, telephone links," which would do "long term huge damage to the American and to the world economy." We reported on Iranian-linked ships near undersea internet cables.

Will Trump Listen To The Hawks?

Davis played a clip of Fox News commentator Marc Thiessen on Vice President JD Vance, who had said the Republicans lost because of the war. Thiessen: "It was, quite frankly, disloyal to the president of the United States." Davis added that the Wall Street Journal said Vance's theory of the defeat "comes close to a public [counsel] of surrender." His question: "Are you concerned that President Trump may listen to these people and say, no, I really do need to go back and finish the job?"

"I think it's quite possible. I think it's actually most likely," Crooke said. He said such voices never ask about costs: "due diligence on these things? Don't you say, well, what if? What happens then?" What could short-circuit it, he said, were the Israeli politics and the markets, which he said were "close to collapsing" the night before, with "two, nearly three trillion of value knocked off the stock market."

Europe's Ukraine Bill

Davis closed by asking whether Europe has the same dynamic, "not give another 175 billion that they don't have to Zelensky." Crooke said the EU's roughly EUR90 billion loan to Ukraine does not appear in the budget: "You won't find a line entry in the European budget for 90 billion." It was debt underwritten by member states and booked under "headroom," he said. The EU's own description of the loan is that it is funded by borrowing against that headroom, RFE/RL reported.

Crooke said Zelensky has spent most of it and "I need 70 billion urgently and probably 155 billion to get through the next years." We found no source for those figures. "It's not affordable. Everyone can see it's not affordable," Crooke said. 

His answer to what Europe will do is that it will keep going, on a seven-year budget that he said needs sharply higher contributions from member states.