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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had reasons to be pleased after his recent Balkan tour. Visiting Albania on Oct. 10, 2024, Erdoğan promised to donate an unspecified number of kamikaze drones to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and the two leaders jointly opened the largest mosque in the Balkans. The next day, Erdoğan visited Belgrade, where he and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vučić discussed military cooperation, including a likely drone program.  Ankara’s post–Cold War engagement with the Balkans, particularly Serbs and Albanians, has followed a twisting path.

This is Chapter 11 in the Infertility Memoir. Read previous chapters here.
With our embryos now in Pennsylvania, and a plan in place, it was time to start all of the appointments as we prepared for our second transfer. Back in March, my doctor started me on birth control so that once my embryos arrived my body would be ready to start the other medications. Originally I was only supposed to be taking them for a few months, but I had been taking them for six months. By the time September 2023 came, that created an added hurdle to proceed with a natural transfer cycle.

Mark Munsell has been tapped to serve as the chief AI officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the spy organization announced Tuesday.
The move comes amid a broader push by the U.S. intelligence community and Defense Department to onboard more AI technologies. Last week, President Biden issued a new national security memorandum that prods the Defense Department and IC to go faster in adopting these types of capabilities. Munsell was at National Defense University where National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan rolled out the memo, according to a post on LinkedIn.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is apologizing to a veteran who received a voicemail from a facility in El Paso Texas, in which VA employees can be heard speculating that the veteran was seeking to retain his 100% disability rating, when one of them says, “It’s all about the money.”
“VA deeply apologizes to this Veteran, and we are reaching out to him immediately,” VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes told Task & Purpose on Tuesday.

Ryan popped over to Quantico to speak with four marines at the forefront of major advances in marksmanship in America’s 9-1-1 force. Listen in as Maj. Steve Stephenson, Capt. Phil Williams, Gunner Josh Grayek, and Gunnery Sgt. Jude Stewart of Weapons Training Battalion explain how they are making the Marine Corps more lethal and capable than ever before. And, if you’re interested in reading more, check out their article in the Gazette, “Continuously Revolutionizing Small-Arms Lethality.” Image: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl.

A Navy Reserve commander was sentenced to 30 months in prison for accepting thousands of dollars in bribes for a visa program reserved for Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. government prior to the Taliban takeover of the country, federal officials said.
Jeromy Pittmann, 53, of Pensacola, Florida, accepted bribes in exchange for drafting, submitting, and verifying fake recommendations for Afghan nationals who applied for Special Immigrant Visas with the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Justice said in a release.

The Pentagon on Tuesday released its implementation plan for the National Defense Industrial Strategy, which calls for boosting production of solid rocket motors as a “complement” to its Replicator unmanned systems initiative.
A key goal of Replicator is to help grease the wheels of the acquisition system so that the department can field thousands of “attritable autonomous” platforms to counter China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by six Republican members of the House of Representatives, which targeted absentee ballots including those mailed home by troops and their families overseas.  The Republican legislators took issue with Pennsylvania’s process for verifying the identity of the voters behind absentee ballots..
But U.S. District Judge Christoper Conner ruled Tuesday that separating and verifying roughly 25,000 absentee ballots so close to the Nov.

Close to 60 nations now back the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, more than a year after U.S. leadership unveiled that international norms and arms control proposal and it was accepted for adoption with partners, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. 
The Pentagon’s No.

On Oct. 26, 1882, the village of Angoon, was home to nearly 420 Tlingit people in southeast Alaska, not far from the modern state capital of Juneau. 
But in an afternoon of shelling, looting and arson, U.S. Navy sailors destroyed the village and left the native community so bereft that many of the Tlingit people died during the subsequent winter months.
This week, the Navy formally apologized for the destruction. Rear Adm.