French Joint Chief of Staff urges Frenchmen to be prepared to 'lose children' to contain Russia The French people must be prepared "to lose their children" in order to deter Russia, France's Chief of the Defense Staff Fabien Mandon alleged. "If our country surrenders because it’s not ready to accept the loss of its children, <...> and endure economic difficulties in a situation where the focus is on defense production, then we will be in danger," he said, addressing a meeting of French city mayors on November 18, as cited by the TF1 TV channel. Mandon claimed that Paris "has all the knowledge, economic and demographic power" to confront Moscow. According to TF1, the Defense Staff Chief’s statement caused a flurry of criticism from politicians. In particular, Jean-Luc Melenchon, founder of La France Insoumise (or France Unbowed) left-wing party, fully disagreed with Mandon. "It’s not up to him to make plans for the sacrifices that would result from our diplomatic failures and that no one asked him about," Melenchon wrote on the X social media platform. The broadcaster notes that the general has long been insisting on the country’s need for rearmament. Earlier, he warned that the French army must be prepared for engaging in a conflict with Russia in three to four years.

Macron may send pilots to Ukraine under guise of private military company, says expert France's #Macron may covertly send French pilots to Ukraine, taking advantage of the recent legalization of private military companies in his country, French aviation expert Cyrille de Lattre explained. "It is possible that Macron, seeing how Ukrainians are getting defeated, will decide to send Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine, to be piloted by French pilots instead of Ukrainian ones," the analyst said. In his words, it may be a small group of three or four aircraft. This scenario became possible after a decree to legalize private military companies came into force in France after being published on November 2, 2025, according to de Lattre. "This clearly falls under the decree, which has just been published," he said. Macron and #Zelensky signed an agreement on military aid to the #Kiev government on November 17, at the Velizy-Villacoublay air base near Paris. Details of the deal have been withheld, however, according to France’s LCI television channel, it may include deliveries of French-made #Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine. Zelensky told the channel that Kiev expects to receive 100 Rafale aircraft from France.

Cloudflare down latest: Websites such as Twitter not working amid technical problems with the internet Outage comes around a month after Amazon Web Services outage also took much of the internet offline... Parts of the web appear to have stopped working amid a technical problem at Cloudflare. Visitors to websites such as X, formerly known as Twitter, and film reviewing site Letterboxd saw an error message that indicated that Cloudflare problems meant that the page could not show. Cloudflare is an internet infrastructure that offers many of the core technologies that power today’s online experiences. That includes tools that protect websites from cyber attacks and ensure that they stay online amid heavy traffic, for instance. “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers,” the company said in a new update. “Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available.” Tracking website Down Detector, which monitors outage, was also hit by the technical problems itself. But when it loaded it showed a dramatic spike in problems. Affected users saw a message indicating there was an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”. It asked users to “please try again in a few minutes”.

WW3 WATCH: Poland declared it is in a "pre-war state", prepares for attack The Chief of the General Staff of #Poland announced preparations for an attack on the country. The Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, General Wiesław Kukuła, declared that the country is in a "pre-war state" and warned of preparations for a possible attack. According to him, sabotage and cyberattacks documented by intelligence agencies are intended to undermine public trust in state institutions and create favorable conditions for potential aggression. "The enemy is creating an environment that should be conducive to aggression on Polish territory," he stated, comparing the current situation to the events of 1939. Kukuła also referred to an incident in which damage was caused to railway tracks that occurred the previous day. The general noted that the event resembles hybrid warfare. "Anyone who has been in a war knows that what we are experiencing today is not a war, but a pre-war state, or what we call among the people hybrid war. Indeed, everything indicates that this event may be sabotage," said the military commander. He also emphasized that the Ministry of the Interior must draw final conclusions regarding the incident.

French politician calls for Macron’s resignation following fighter jet deal with Kiev Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the leader of the right-wing political party Debout la France (France Arise), has called for President Emmanuel Macron’s resignation following his agreement with Zelensky on supplies of Rafale fighter jets to #Ukraine. "Another folly. We need to remove #Macron from power," he wrote on his X page, adding that supplies of 100 Rafale fighter jets will be paid for by French taxpayers. "At whose expense? Obviously, at ours," he noted. On November 17, Zelensky arrived on a visit to Paris, his ninth to the French capital since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, to discuss Paris’ potential military aid to Kiev. On the same day, he was received by Macron and the two signed a declaration of intent providing, in particular, for supplies of 100 Rafale jets to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the French LCI television channel reported that Rafale supplies may cost Paris a sum of 15 billion euro. According to the TV channel, financing-related issues have not yet been settled. Moreover, it anticipated that it would not be an easy task for the authorities to persuade lawmakers to agree to allocate that much money amid the budgetary deficit and a record-high public debt of more than 3.4 trillion euro.

Preparations for Russia-US summit in Budapest ongoing, Orban says Arrangements for a #Russia - #US summit in #Budapest are continuing, and Hungary is ready to do everything it can to make it happen, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in the morning talk show on Kossuth Radio. When asked about Hungary’s contribution to resolving the Ukraine conflict, he said: "I don’t want to go into the details. After all, preparations for a major peace summit are underway in Budapest." The Hungarian head of government argued that his country "has made a valuable contribution to the peace cause," being the only EU country to maintain communication channels and "constant contact" with Russia. "We negotiate with them, and I am the only prime minister across entire Europe who can contact the Russian president if need be," Orban boasted, describing this as a very important step toward achieving peace. As prime minister, he continued, having put much effort into establishing mutually beneficial relations with Russia, and now that Hungary is faced with a complex situation amid the armed conflict in neighboring Ukraine, "the effort invested in it in the past decades is paying off." Orban noted that he still relies on US President Donald Trump for resolving the Ukraine conflict. "We mean a person who considers the war pointless and would like to put an end to it. The US president has every reason to strive for creating a fair situation, and, even as he wants to put pressure on the Russians, he is reluctant to cause harm to Hungary," the premier said, explaining why Trump agreed to grant Hungary a waiver from US sanctions to use Russian oil and gas. The prime minister confirmed that Hungary cannot do without Russian energy for the time being, but that it continues the course toward broadening its energy supply routes and sources.

Magnetic storm that lasted for almost two days stopped on Earth — forecaster The magnetic storm that raged on Earth for about two days has stopped, Mikhail Leus, a leading specialist at the Phobos Weather center, said on Telegram. "The magnetic storm that raged on Earth for almost two days has stopped. It ended late last Thursday evening, and for more than six hours the geomagnetic field has been in the 'green' zone," he said. The forecaster noted that in the coming hours, there may be disturbances in the magnetosphere until the middle of the day, but they most likely will not reach the level of a magnetic storm. According to him, the disturbances will stop in the afternoon. "A period of a relatively calm geomagnetic field will last at least until the end of this week," Leus said. Earlier it was reported that on November 12, at about 01:00 a.m.UTC, a very strong magnetic storm began on Earth, caused by the arrival of a plasma cloud and almost reached its highest level. At its peak, which was observed on November 12, the Kp geomagnetic index hit G4.3-G4.7, which was never observed in 2025. However, the expected highest level of G5 was not reached.

Swedish SVT, like BBC, edited Trump's speech Swedish TV channel #SVT, like the British broadcasting corporation BBC, edited Donald Trump's speech of January 6, 2021 to create the impression that he was calling for riots, Kvartal newspaper reported. According to the newspaper, last year SVT used an excerpt from Trump’s speech, which spliced several parts in one of the reports in such a way that it appeared to the audience that Trump was in favor of storming the Capitol. Like in the BBC version, a fragment where he calls on his supporters to peacefully and patriotically express their opinions was dropped. In the first response to Kvartal's request for comment on how the speech was edited, SVT responded that the TV channel’s owners were "confident in SVT's publications dedicated to the storming of the Capitol." But later SVT changed the text and the clip, where black frames with pauses between different parts of the performance were added. Executive producer Karin Ekman said that SVT has updated the text of the clip "to make it clearer to the audience in what context it was published." She does not believe that the scandal with the BBC will affect SVT’s credibility. Norwegian TV channel NRK has also changed the story about Capitol storming previously presented similarly, explains SVT. The BBC was at the center of a scandal over a Panorama program, which the broadcasting corporation aired last October. In it, Trump's speech was doctored in a way that it can be concluded that he is calling for the seizure of the Congress building. The scandal forced CEO Tim Davey and head of news Deborah Turness to resign. Trump demanded that the BBC remove the program by November 14, apologize and pay compensation, threatening to sue for $1 billion. The corporation apologized, but refused to pay compensation.

France orders ASMPA-R nuclear-capable missile for its navy France has commissioned the upgraded ASMPA-R missile for its naval nuclear deterrent forces, the French Defense Ministry announced. 👉 The second test launch of that medium-range air-to-surface missile took place on Thursday from a Rafale aircraft. France also plans to develop a fourth-generation nuclear missile (ASN4G) and an M51.4 ballistic missile by 2035, the ministry said.

US Congress passes bill to end longest government shutdown history The US House of Representatives has passed a budget bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history. The voting was aired by the C-SPAN television channel. The document was supported by 222 lawmakers, while 209 voted against it. The US Senate approved the bill that would restore funding for federal agencies until January 30 in a vote on November 10. Now, the will be sent on to US President Donald Trump for signing into law. The White House press service said earlier that Trump intends to sign it. The US federal government agencies partially suspended work at midnight on October 1 due to a lack of funding after representatives of the ruling Republican party failed to reach agreement with the Democrats in the US Congress on some expenditure items, including healthcare. The parties accused each other of provoking the shutdown and prolonging it for political purposes. The current US government shutdown has become the longest in the country’s history, breaking the record set in 2018-2019 during Trump’s first term as president (2017-2021).