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Last time we spoke about the Miluo River Catastrophe. On September 17, General Xue Yue, watching alarming reconnaissance telegrams, learns the Japanese 11th Army has massed across the north bank of the Xinqiang River—3rd, 4th, 6th, and 40th Divisions—alongside additional detachments. Chinese operatives even intercept a Japanese order directing divisions to prepare for an attack on September 18. Despite this, Xue Yue's decisions and readiness remain inadequate. By September 21–23, the fighting at and around the Miluo River and Dongting Lake destroys the 37th Army's ability to function as a coherent combat force. The disaster as both tactical collapse and a failure of planning: Japanese interception and decoding of radio orders allow them to shift toward encirclement, turning Chinese movements into a "trap" laid in advance.   #211 The Japanese Blunt China's Iron Army at Changsha Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The four divisions that had stormed into northern Hunan had made good progress, achieving the victory of defeating three main Chinese armies in quick succession. General Anami Korechika, commanding the Japanese forces, was secretly pleased, but he dared not slacken his efforts in the slightest. He was a methodical man, and he understood that the contest was not yet decided. Every day, his intelligence officers placed before him a stream of intercepted Chinese military telegrams and aerial reconnaissance reports. What they showed gave him reason for both confidence and caution. Two significant forces were moving toward the battlefield — forces unlike those he had so far encountered. One of them was Chiang Kai-shek's elite 74th Army, a formation whose reputation had reached Anami long before, from his time at headquarters in Tokyo. The other was the 10th Army, considered second only to the 74th in quality and fighting spirit.   The 74th Army was no ordinary unit. It had been rigorously trained under German and Soviet instructors specially hired by Chiang Kai-shek, its officers schooled in both European combined-arms doctrine and Soviet tactical flexibility. It was characterized by its disciplined offensive and defensive tactics and was lavishly equipped by the standards of the Chinese military. Most remarkably, it had maintained an undefeated record on the battlefield since the beginning of the war — a distinction that had earned it the title of "Iron Army of the Anti-Japanese War" among the Chinese people. In the high command of the Imperial Japanese Army, it was referred to, with a mixture of respect and wariness, as the Tora no Ko — the "Tiger Child" — meaning, in essence, the ace in the enemy's hand.   The 10th Army was held in nearly equal esteem. The deployment of either of these two formations required the personal approval of Chiang Kai-shek himself. The Generalissimo's principle for employing them was clear and deliberate: they were to be committed only to the most critical battles, those that would decide outcomes, or to the most prominent ones, where their prowess could demonstrate the might of the Chinese army to a watching nation. Since the outbreak of the war, the 74th Army had been kept in reserve at Fenyi in Jiangxi Province, and the 10th Army at Hengyang in southern Hunan. Both forces had been conserving their strength, training, and waiting.   Now Anami's relentless offensive had forced Chiang Kai-shek's hand. The battle situation had tilted dangerously under the weight of Japanese pressure, and the fall of several elite units had left the Chinese commander of the Ninth War Zone, General Xue Yue, with little room to maneuver. Xue Yue had no choice but to appeal to Chongqing for help, and Chiang Kai-shek, reluctantly and with full awareness of the risks, agreed to release his two trump cards. Anami, having mastered his opponent's intentions through his intelligence apparatus, now found himself in the rare and advantageous position of a card player who could see his opponent's hole cards. He carefully planned his battle strategy, studying maps late into the night, conferring with his officers, and calculating how best to neutralize the Chinese elite before they could bring their full weight to bear. He knew that his life's honor, his career, and his legacy rested on this one gamble.   Li Yutang, the commander of the 10th Army, was from Guangrao in Shandong Province — a place that had given China more than its share of fighting men. He was a graduate of the first class of the illustrious Whampoa Military Academy, where he had trained alongside men who would go on to shape the fate of China. At the academy, he had been part of a celebrated group known informally as the "Four Lis of Shandong": himself, Li Xianzhou, Li Yannian, and Li Hanfan. The first three would all rise to significant commands in the Nationalist army. The fourth, Li Hanfan, a native of Changqing in Shandong, had taken an entirely different path, joining the Communist Party of China and fighting the same war under a different flag. In later years, the group became known as the "Three Lis of Shandong," the fourth having parted ways with his classmates long before the guns fell silent.   Li Yutang had not risen quickly or through privilege. He embodied the hardworking, resilient, and tenacious qualities long associated with the men of Shandong — qualities forged by a hard land and harder circumstances. He had climbed the ranks of the army step by step: platoon leader, company commander, battalion commander, regimental commander. Each step had been earned through performance under fire. When Japan launched its full-scale invasion in 1937, Li Yutang was serving as commander of the 3rd Division of the 2nd Army under Li Yannian, participating in the brutal Battle of Shanghai in August of that year. He fought in the grinding urban warfare along the Suzhou Creek, learning lessons in modern combat that would serve him for the rest of the war. The following spring, in March and April of 1938, he led his troops in the Battle of Xuzhou, holding the Linyi line northeast of Taierzhuang, blocking the Japanese 5th Division under Itagaki Seishiro from breaking through to reinforce the embattled Japanese forces at that critical engagement. His handling of the defense contributed to one of the few early Chinese battlefield successes of the war.   For his performance at Xuzhou, he was promoted to commander of the 8th Army. During the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, he led his troops in major engagements against the Japanese 101st and 106th Divisions along the Nanxun Railway, inflicting significant casualties on the attackers. After that campaign, General Xue Yue, recognizing both Li's talent and his Shandong origins — Shandong being home to Mount Tai, the foremost of China's Five Sacred Mountains — personally inscribed a banner reading "Mount Tai Army" and formally presented it to Li Yutang's 8th Army. Chiang Kai-shek added his own recognition, awarding Li Huazhou a medal. In the Battle of Nanchang, Li Yutang again distinguished himself, leading his troops in the defense of Wuning for ten days and ten nights of uninterrupted fighting. When the battle was over, Japanese soldiers lay piled in front of his defensive lines, and the name "Taishan Army" was on every officer's lips from Chongqing to the front. After the First Battle of Changsha in 1939, Chiang Kai-shek personally nominated Li Yutang to take command of the 10th Army — the posting that would now define his legacy. The orders came on September 20, 1941 — three days after the Japanese forces had broken through the Xiangbei defense line in the north. General Xue Yue's summons reached Li Yutang's headquarters in Hengyang, and the 10th Army began immediate preparations for movement to the battlefield.   The mobilization was extraordinary even by the standards of an army that prided itself on discipline and fighting spirit. Li Yutang addressed his men, and the response was unlike anything a commander might ordinarily expect. He received wave after wave of letters — requests to be placed at the front, declarations of determination, pledges to die before surrendering. Some of the letters were written in ordinary ink. Others had been written in blood, the soldier biting his own finger to draw enough for a few lines. These were not men who needed to be driven to battle. They were men who had spent months training for precisely this moment.   Their preparation had been rigorous to the point of fanaticism. For six months before the order came, the 10th Army had conducted intensive training in the three core skills of infantry combat: marksmanship, grenade throwing, and bayonet fighting. The Ministry of National Defense had set a standard that considered a unit successful if one quarter of its men scored "top-tier" in each category. Chiang Kai-shek had personally raised the bar for the 10th Army: eighty percent of every unit must score "top-tier," with the remainder no lower than "excellent." Any unit falling short would face elimination. When the assessments were completed, the result was unambiguous — one hundred percent of the army had met the standard.   Over 30,000 men boarded seven special trains at Hengyang, their military songs and mobilization slogans ringing through the station as families and bystanders watched them depart. The troops traveled by train to Zhuzhou, then transferred to motor vehicles for the road north to Changsha, arriving in the Jinjing area — some seventy kilometers northeast of the city — on September 22nd. They had moved with professional speed. What awaited them would test something no training exercise could fully replicate. From the moment of arrival, the situation was clear to any officer with eyes: the 10th Army had stepped into chaos. However, given the already established passive situation, the 10th Army was like a leaf caught in a whirlpool as soon as it arrived on the battlefield. General Xue Yue, at the Ninth War Zone Command, immediately ordered the entire army to support the besieged 37th Army and simultaneously launch an offensive against the Japanese 3rd Division. It was an ambitious order for troops who had just completed a multi-day journey and had not yet oriented themselves to the ground. Nevertheless, Li Yutang passed the order down and his divisions began to move.   The first division to feel the dislocating effect of high command's demands was Zhu Yue's 190th Division. On September 23rd, the vanguard regiment of the 190th made contact with Japanese forces and was preparing to engage. Before a single shot was fired in earnest, Division Commander Zhu Yue received a telegram from army headquarters ordering him to abandon his current position and rush immediately to Shending Mountain to relieve the siege of the 140th Division of the 37th Army. The order brooked no delay. The troops dropped their baggage where it lay and ran — truly ran, in light order — to the vicinity of Shending Mountain.   They had barely formed ranks at their new position when a second telegram arrived from General Xue Yue. The 190th Division was to immediately reverse course and return to the Fulipu area to establish a defensive line and block the Japanese advance southward. Another forced march, exhausting men who had already marched and traveled for days. They arrived at the designated position on time — a testimony to their conditioning — and Zhu Yue established his division headquarters at Liangjiaduan, near Fulipu. After all the aimless marching and countermanding orders, after all the wasted energy and fruitless attempts, the troops were running on the last of their reserves. They worked through the night constructing fortifications with shovels and bare hands. Just as the first light of dawn revealed the outline of their new positions, the Japanese army advanced.   General Toyoshima Fusataro's Japanese 3rd Division had not rested. It had decisively defeated the 37th Army on the night of the 23rd and turned immediately, without pause, to attack the 190th Division. The blow came from the sky before it came from the ground. At dawn, more than ten Japanese planes swept down over Zhu Yue's division headquarters — seemingly guided, as the Chinese soldiers would later say, as if they had eyes in their heads, so accurate was the targeting. The small village that housed the headquarters was bombed almost to the ground. Dust and smoke billowed over the ruins as the aircraft banked away, and before it had settled, over a thousand Japanese infantrymen, seemingly springing from the earth itself, rushed forward directly toward the headquarters position. The regiment commanders, still at their positions elsewhere, could not be recalled in time.   Division Commander Zhu Yue did not hesitate. He drew his pistol and began commanding his subordinate units to fight back, rallying the headquarters staff and support troops into a perimeter defense. Under the fierce and accurate Japanese fire, Zhu Yue was hit by a bullet in his right arm. Then another round struck him in the left leg, and he went down. Almost simultaneously, Deputy Division Commander Lai Shixiang took command of the nearest available men and attempted to lead a breakout with a machine gun. An enemy mortar round found its mark, and Lai Shixiang was killed instantly. The division headquarters personnel, already shocked by the swiftness of the attack and the wounding of their commander, broke into disorder. Chaos erupted on the battlefield. Many soldiers ran blindly in the smoke and confusion, dying in the crossfire from multiple directions.   Division Chief of Staff Tao Xiu, now acting as deputy division commander with Zhu Yue incapacitated, took hold of the situation as best he could. He led the remnants of the headquarters staff in retreat toward a hollow in a grove of trees near the edge of the village. When the headcount was taken, approximately twenty men remained capable of fighting. It was already ten o'clock in the morning. Tao Xiu gathered these few men and led them along a small path through the dense forest on the outskirts of the village, bypassing Liangjiaduan, searching for the dispersed units of the division.   Out on the main positions, the 568th, 569th, and 570th Regiments were simultaneously surrounded and attacked. The officers and soldiers, exhausted from days and nights of continuous fighting, summoned what remained of their endurance and put up a tenacious resistance. From dawn until the afternoon, several positions were cut off and divided by Japanese encircling movements. In the ever-shrinking pockets, each cluster of defenders became an isolated target for enemy aircraft and artillery. Completely losing the initiative, groups of officers and soldiers perished in the shelling. Many of them died not in defiance but in something closer to despair — regretting this humiliating reversal, the waste of their patriotic aspirations, their unfulfilled desire to fight and kill the enemy on their own terms.   By evening, the regimental commanders had lost control of their respective battalions and companies. The remaining soldiers on each position scattered and concealed themselves in whatever ground offered cover, hiding in all directions across the darkening hills. It was not until midnight that the lightly wounded and unwounded officers and soldiers managed to assemble, as the contingency plan had directed, in a dense forest on the southwest side of the position. Division Commander Zhu Yue, wounded in both his arm and his leg, had been sent to the rear to receive treatment. Acting Deputy Division Commander Tao Xiu stood before the assembled survivors — more than two hundred men gathered from the regiments — and offered them quiet words of comfort. There was little else he could give them. The people present carried the seriously wounded on improvised stretchers and supported the lightly wounded with their arms and shoulders, groping their way through the darkness toward Zhuzhou. The 10th Reserve Division, under Commander Fang Xianjue, had been assigned to hold the Jinjing line — a position that, on paper, formed an anchor of the defensive scheme. In practice, the situation was deeply flawed from the outset. The Ninth War Zone Command had placed the 10th Reserve Division alone at Jinjing with no depth behind it and no friendly forces on either flank — an isolated salient that offered the Japanese every opportunity for encirclement.   On the 23rd, the division captured the Kanai line at noon, an initial success that promised more than it delivered. Around six o'clock in the evening, as darkness gathered, General Kanda Masatsuka arrived at the front with the vanguard of the Japanese 6th Division. He was not a man to move without information. Before committing to a full assault, Kanda ordered a probing attack and watched its progress carefully through binoculars from a small hill behind the advancing force. What he saw gave him pause. However he searched for a weak point in the Chinese line, the defenders showed none. No gap in the wire, no position carelessly manned, no sector that sagged under pressure. Kanda lowered his binoculars and considered his next step. He felt this was indeed an elite unit with excellent tactical skills, and should not be underestimated. He ordered a halt to the attack and waited for the full arrival of his division's strength.   On the morning of the 24th, the Japanese launched their proper assault — a fierce attack from the east, north, and west simultaneously. The three-directional pressure was designed to pin the defenders and deny any lateral reinforcement. Kanda went further, requesting permission from General Anami to concentrate all thirty-plus bombers available for the entire battlefield and direct them at the 10th Reserve Division's positions in a single concentrated raid. Anami granted the request. The bombing was devastating. The defending positions were almost completely destroyed from the air. Yet in the ruins of their fortifications and bunkers, the soldiers of the 10th Reserve Division continued fighting, repelling Japanese ground attacks wave after wave through the rubble and the smoke.   At two o'clock in the afternoon, a report reached Fang Xianjue that halted him in his tracks. A Japanese regiment had executed a large-scale outflanking maneuver around the south side of Jinjing and was approaching the rear of the position. The encirclement was closing. Fang Xianjue was shocked. He now grasped in full the tactical impossibility of his assignment. The Ninth War Zone Command had placed the 10th Reserve Division here alone, exposed on all sides, without depth and without support. The order to "block the enemy's southward advance" had been an empty promise from the start. Fang Xianjue could not understand the strategic intention behind the deployment at all — there was none that made any tactical sense. The only purpose of holding out here, he concluded bitterly, was to theoretically be seen to be "fighting the Japanese." Before Fang Xianjue could translate his analysis into a decision, the Japanese troops launched another fierce attack from the front and both flanks, and one side of the defensive line was breached. The situation became critical. Fang Xianjue decided to withdraw before the encircling force to the south could complete its movement and seal off all escape. He did not have time to seek authorization from the war zone — there was no time. He ordered each regiment to organize its own breakout and reassemble at designated locations.   At four o'clock in the afternoon, Fang Xianjue led the division headquarters in the first withdrawal from the battlefield. Looking back as he departed, he watched as the regiments were cut apart by Japanese fire, large numbers of officers and soldiers falling among the mountain ridges and into the ditches and gullies. There was nothing more he could do for them.   By the 25th, approximately half of the division's troops had reached the designated reception point. After a hasty reorganization, they were ordered to occupy positions along the Xueshi Bridge line and prepare to resume the defense. That same evening, a portion of the Japanese 3rd Division — fresh from its defeat of the 190th Division — launched a fierce attack on Xueshi Bridge. The positions could not be held. The scene of the previous day's rout was repeated almost exactly, and this second defeat completed the destruction of the 10th Reserve Division as a coherent fighting force. General Xue Yue's rebuke reached Fang Xianjue shortly afterward, and the division commander had no way to express the depth of his frustration — the tactical position he had been placed in had made his assignment impossible before the first shot was fired. On the 26th, he led the surviving troops to be received and reorganized by war zone units near Changsha. Compared to the bitter fates of the 190th Division and the 10th Reserve Division, Zhou Qingxiang's 3rd Division wrote a different kind of story in these same days — one of extraordinary tactical competence maintained against mounting odds. In the equally fierce battles, the 3rd Division demonstrated the qualities of an elite force more effectively than any other unit on either side.   On the 22nd, the 3rd Division had been ordered to establish positions two kilometers east of Fulipu. At noon on the 24th, after the Japanese 3rd Division defeated Zhu Yue's 190th Division, a portion of the Japanese force turned and attacked the right flank of Zhou Qingxiang's position. It was repelled. That evening, the Japanese 4th Division, riding the momentum of its success against the 37th Army, launched a night attack on the 3rd Division's left flank. It too was repelled. On the 25th, Zhou Qingxiang's division was attacked from both sides simultaneously by the main forces of two Japanese divisions — forces that outnumbered the defenders several times over. The officers and soldiers of the entire division showed no fear. They fought bravely and with skill honed by months of intensive preparation, holding their lines despite heavy casualties and preventing the Japanese from breaking through at any point.   When word of this resistance was relayed to General Anami Korechika at his headquarters, he fell into a long, uncharacteristic silence. He studied the reports before him, the maps, the casualty tallies on both sides. Then he turned to his chief of staff, General Isamu Kinoshita. "This is the elite force," Anami said quietly. He paused a moment, and added: "I really want to go there and see for myself." The compliment, delivered in the private setting of a Japanese headquarters, was perhaps the most honest assessment of the fighting quality of Zhou Qingxiang's men that history has preserved.   Anami's response, however, was not admiration — it was determination to overwhelm. On the morning of the 26th, he concentrated nearly the entire combat power available to him against the single 3rd Division: units drawn from the Japanese 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 40th Divisions — close to 100,000 men — were directed to surround and destroy the Chinese formation. The 3rd Division stubbornly held its ground despite catastrophic casualties, the soldiers refusing to give way even as the perimeter contracted and the dead accumulated.   To ease the relentless pressure from enemy aircraft, the division commanders made a calculated decision: all positions were ordered to allow the Japanese troops to close to hand-to-hand fighting range. If the enemy was within arm's reach, the bombers above could not strike without killing their own men. Several instances of fierce hand-to-hand fighting erupted across the defensive line as a result — bayonets, shovels, pistols and bare hands in the broken earth and shell craters. By noon, the 8th Regiment had been divided and surrounded. Shortly afterward, the 7th and 9th Regiments met the same fate. Zhou Qingxiang moved the division headquarters to the position of the 7th Regiment to maintain command over his most accessible unit, while the deputy division commander and chief of staff were dispatched to coordinate the independent defense of the 8th and 9th Regiments respectively. For another half day, each of the three regimental pockets fought alone. At dusk, Zhou Qingxiang ordered a breakout.   As darkness fell, exploiting the brief respite that came when the Japanese halted their attacks for the night, each regiment burst simultaneously from its position. Carefully prepared covering detachments remained behind and created convincing feints toward false breakout directions, drawing the enemy's main pursuit forces away from the actual withdrawal routes. The deceptions worked. By the time the Japanese commanders understood what had happened, the breakout had succeeded. Officers and soldiers filtered into the designated reception point in small groups — three men here, five there — arriving through the night and into the following morning. When the count was complete, the 3rd Division was a remnant of less than one-fifth of its pre-battle strength. The finest infantry division in the 10th Army had bled itself almost dry, but it had done so on its own terms, and it had extracted as much as it was possible to extract from an impossible situation.   On September 27th, a chilly autumn wind blew across the city of Changsha. At the playground of Lizhong Middle School in the eastern part of the city, Li Yutang stood and watched the survivors of his divisions come in. A week before, on September 20th, more than 30,000 men had departed Hengyang aboard seven special trains. Their military songs had filled the railway station. Their letters of determination, some written in blood, had been stacked on Li Yutang's desk. Their training scores were the highest ever recorded for a Chinese army unit — a perfect one hundred percent of "top-tier" achievement across all three infantry skills. They had been, by every measurable standard, the finest army China could produce.   Standing now at the playground of a secondary school repurposed as a muster point, Li Yutang looked at what remained: a little over 2,000 men, including lightly wounded soldiers from Changsha who had been caught up in the fighting and bandaged civilians who had taken up arms. Two thousand, from thirty thousand. What had happened to the others? They were dead. They were injured. They were maimed. Some had broken under the pressure and run. The accounting was simple and devastating. Li Yutang's expression remained dignified as he inspected his survivors — the face of a commander who understood that bearing is required of officers precisely in the moments when bearing costs the most. But his heart was filled with tears. Perhaps soon, he reflected, there would be another 10th Army — still heroic and spirited, still singing loudly as it went to war. But it would not be the same one.   History has no gaps or blank pages. The story of the 10th Army's ordeal was barely complete before the next chapter began. Reluctantly, one must turn the page. Following the 10th Army, Wang Yaowu's 74th Army also suffered a crushing defeat. Wang Yaowu had received his orders from Commander Xue on September 21st and had immediately begun moving his three divisions from their cantonments at Fenyi and Xinyu in Jiangxi Province. The 74th Army was composed of three divisions: the 51st Division under Li Tianxia, the 57th Division under Yu Chengwan, and the 58th Division under Liao Lingqi. These were the formations that had kept the "Iron Army" undefeated through four years of brutal warfare. Their code names told their own story — the 51st Division was called "Frontline," the 57th was called "Tiger Warrior," and the 58th was called "Exhilarating." Wang Yaowu had personally chosen the code name for the army headquarters: "Brilliant." Chiang Kai-shek himself had once remarked, "Of all the code names, yours is the best." It was a small distinction, but one that Wang Yaowu quietly cherished.   What Wang Yaowu did not know — could not know, for Anami's intelligence network had kept the preparation perfectly concealed — was that Anami Korechika had been monitoring his movements since the order to deploy was first issued. The Japanese commander had already selected the terrain, positioned his units, and laid the trap. He was waiting for the 74th Army's arrival.   On the 25th, Wang Yaowu led the 57th Division into the battlefield first, marching rapidly as Xue Yue had directed to Chunhua Mountain on the north bank of the Laodao River, east of Changsha, to occupy positions and cover the main force's deployment. On the evening of the 25th, the 169th and 170th Regiments of the 57th Division arrived at the south side of Chunhua Mountain and encountered a Japanese search party of over a hundred men. The 169th Regiment swiftly cut off the small force's escape route, coordinating effectively with the 170th. The Japanese detachment suffered heavy casualties, and the survivors fled toward Chunhua Mountain. When part of the 170th Regiment reached the foot of the mountain, they ran into a much larger Japanese force coming down to meet them — and learned in that moment that Chunhua Mountain had already been occupied by the enemy.   Wang Yaowu responded instantly. To seize the initiative before the Japanese could consolidate, he ordered two regiments to assault Chunhua Mountain that same night. Around midnight, the troops advanced in silence through the dark. After a fierce night battle, two Japanese battalions were unable to hold against the assault and withdrew in the early hours of the morning. The 57th Division had its foothold. At dawn on the 26th, a regiment from the 57th Division followed up the night's success, and Yu Chengwan positioned the division along the Chunhua Mountain line. As the morning advanced, the 51st and 58th Divisions arrived to complete the deployment. Following Xue Yue's orders, Wang Yaowu spread his force across the line: the 57th Division at Chishi River, the 58th Division at Chunhua Mountain itself, and the 51st Division at Fengjiang Bridge. They were ready. Or so it appeared.   At dawn on the 27th, Wang Yaowu went on the offensive. The 57th Division launched a surprise attack on the camp of the main force regiment of the Japanese 3rd Division. The Japanese were caught entirely unprepared — the attack came in total darkness, and the camp was thrown into chaos before anyone could organize a coherent response. The Japanese managed to form some kind of defense only as the first light of dawn broke, and through the morning the two armies clashed furiously. By mid-morning, the Japanese had been forced back three kilometers — a genuine and significant victory achieved through aggression and timing.   Then, at eight o'clock, the Japanese 3rd Division launched its counterattack with the support of dozens of aircraft — fighter-bombers diving low over the Chunhua Mountain positions, strafing and bombing. Both armies knew themselves to be elite formations; each had its country's reputation riding on the outcome. They clashed with corresponding ferocity.   Around noon, Wang Yaowu climbed to the rooftop of a farmhouse and studied the Japanese battle line through his field glasses. What he saw was encouraging: a breach had appeared in the enemy's formation to the north of Chunhua Mountain — a gap that, if exploited quickly, could roll up the Japanese flank. He ordered Li Hanqing, the infantry commander of the 51st Division, to take two regiments and execute an outflanking maneuver through that gap, striking the Japanese from the side. An hour later, Li Hanqing's movement succeeded. The Japanese forces were thrown into disarray, breaking rearward in a rout. For one brief hour, it seemed as though the 74th Army might achieve a decisive success. Then the Japanese 4th Division arrived. It swept in from behind Li Hanqing's flanking force, surrounding his two regiments before they could extract themselves. In the desperate fighting of the breakout attempt, Li Hanqing was shot and killed.   In the afternoon, with two of its regiments lost to encirclement and its flanking stroke reversed, the 57th Division found itself holding off two full Japanese divisions alone. The fighting continued — artillery, rifle fire, close assaults — until nightfall dimmed the battlefield. The division had suffered over 3,000 casualties, and more than half of all commanders below battalion level had been killed or wounded. Division Commander Yu Chengwan conferred with Wang Yaowu over the field telephone, and together they decided to withdraw the troops to prepared positions to hold through the night.   Meanwhile, on the same 27th of September, Liao Lingqi's 58th Division at Chunhua Mountain was subjected to a separate and equally devastating assault by the Japanese 6th Division, reinforced by elements of the 3rd Division. The positions at Chunhua Mountain were compact and clustered — ideal targets for concentrated aerial bombardment. The Japanese bombers came in two waves, and after both had passed, the hastily constructed earthen fortifications were almost entirely destroyed. Across what had been the defensive line, limbs and broken bodies could be seen among the wreckage. The entire division had suffered devastating casualties.   Beginning at nine o'clock in the morning, tens of thousands of Japanese troops launched successive offensive waves, methodically dividing the defensive line into sections and breaking through each one in turn. The defenders engaged the Japanese in hand-to-hand combat at position after position, gunfire and the shouts of bayonet fighters filling the smoke-thickened air. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the Chunhua Mountain defense line collapsed. The surviving soldiers attempted to break out in small groups, but many were intercepted and cut down by Japanese forces waiting along the escape routes.   Wang Yaowu was seething. He directed the battle from wherever he could find a usable vantage point, issuing orders in rapid succession — one moment ordering the 51st Division to send reinforcements to Chunhua Mountain, the next directing the army's directly subordinate regiments to absorb the shattered remnants of the 58th Division, then ordering the 57th Division to block Japanese forces from reinforcing the encirclement. He was everywhere at once, doing the work of a staff of twenty, improvising responses to crises that unfolded faster than any plan could accommodate. And as he directed, the same thought played and replayed: wasn't the Ninth War Zone just feeding them to the wolves? They had jumped into the enemy's encirclement without any initiative, while the enemy could attack from whatever direction they chose. He had nowhere to vent his frustration on the battlefield, only able to fend for himself. While directing the battle, he cursed under his breath: "What kind of hell is this?!"   As dusk fell over the chaos, the gunfire gradually subsided. The Japanese as a rule did not launch night attacks — a pattern the Chinese had come to rely upon for the brief respite it offered. Li Tianxia, commander of the 51st Division, concentrated his troops from the flanks toward the center to consolidate a defensible perimeter. The 57th Division, adjacent to the 51st and badly diminished by the day's fighting, did the same. Both divisions settled into their positions, and the exhausted soldiers lay down fully clothed, weapons in hand, and tried to rest. At midnight, the battlefield exploded.   Fierce gunfire roused the soldiers from whatever shallow sleep they had found. Two elite regiments of the Japanese 6th Division had broken through the gap that had opened between the positions of the 51st and 57th Divisions — a gap created by both units pulling inward — and were driving directly toward the headquarters of the 74th Army. In Wang Yaowu's many years of battlefield experience, this was the only instance he ever encountered of a large Japanese force launching a major attack at night.   The knowledge of terrain displayed by the attacking Japanese regiments was so precise, the route to army headquarters so accurately selected, that it raised immediate suspicions of an intelligence compromise — an inside source who had provided the attackers with maps and positions. Whatever the explanation, the effect was devastating. The headquarters' directly subordinate regiment and guard battalion were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed. They fought where they could, but the Japanese pushed through them.   The guard platoon leader, a man who had served at Wang Yaowu's side through numerous campaigns, gathered several of his best soldiers and formed a close escort. He led Wang Yaowu into the darkness as the Japanese closed around the headquarters compound. More than a hundred Japanese soldiers gave chase — moving through the dark with a sureness of foot that seemed almost preternatural, as if they had developed night vision. The platoon leader recognized that Wang Yaowu could not outrun a hundred men. He shouted to the general and the remaining escort: "Go quickly!" Then he and a single machine gunner turned and stayed behind. Wang Yaowu ran. A few minutes later, the machine gunner was killed. Shortly after that, the platoon leader was shot through the leg and fell to the ground. He was captured.   Wang Yaowu threw himself into the grass beside a drainage ditch and lay still as Japanese soldiers searched the ground around him, their voices close enough to touch. From his hiding place, he heard his platoon leader — the man who had been at his side day and night, who had chosen to stay behind so that his general might live — cursing the Japanese soldiers from the ground where he lay captured and wounded. Then a Japanese officer drew his sword. The cursing stopped. The Japanese soldiers moved on. The gunfire subsided. Wang Yaowu lay in the grass in the dark and did not move until he was certain they were gone. When he crawled out of the bushes, he looked up at the stars, found the direction of Liuyang, and began walking in the darkness with the few guards who had stayed close. He walked until dawn.   Since joining the army, Wang Yaowu had never allowed himself to think about fear of death. He had spent too many years on battlefields, seen too much death and bloodshed, to entertain it as a personal concern. This time, however, he was in tears. Not from sadness, and not from fear. From something harder to name and harder to bear: frustration — the frustration of a capable commander who had been committed to battle by a higher command that neither understood the ground nor provided him the support to fight on it, and who had watched good men die for orders that made no tactical sense.   In the aftermath of the battle, Wang Yaowu's grief was compounded by something beyond the ordinary losses of combat. The 27th alone had cost the 57th Division nearly half its strength, and the 58th Division had been essentially wiped out as a fighting formation. Of his three powerful divisions, only the 51st remained relatively intact. In war, such losses, however painful, are comprehensible. What happened next was not. Liao Lingqi, the commander of the 58th Division — one of the three officers Wang Yaowu had called his "tigers" — did not remain with his shattered troops to regroup and reorganize them. Instead, after the division's collapse, he slipped away from the battlefield with only his personal guards, changed into civilian clothes, and boarded a train bound for his hometown of Qiyang in southern Hunan to visit his family.   By unhappy chance, a senior staff officer from the Ninth War Zone was aboard the same train. He recognized Liao Lingqi and watched, saying nothing, as the division commander traveled south in civilian dress while his men lay dead on Chunhua Mountain. Upon arriving in Hengyang, the officer went directly to report the incident to General Xue Yue. Xue Yue instructed the Military Law Supervision Department to investigate and referred the case to the Military Commission's Military Law Enforcement Directorate on charges of desertion in the face of the enemy. At that point, in that situation, there was nothing Wang Yaowu could say. He had no words left. He had given everything he had to the battle, and this was what greeted him at the end of it.   The elite 74th Army, with its heroic spirit and its unbroken record, had captured the imagination of the Chinese nation and the hearts of countless young men. When soldiers of the 74th Army returned to their hometowns on leave, they wore their elite status openly, and the prestige of the unit was such that families sought them as sons-in-law. Young men who enlisted and were not selected for the 74th Army were known to weep. What a fine unit. But this time, the trap had been perfectly laid, and the intelligence had been mastered. Anami had looked at his opponent's hole cards and played accordingly. He had concentrated overwhelming force, moved with coordination and speed, and exploited the confusion generated by contradictory orders from the Ninth War Zone Command. The Chinese elite had fought with courage and skill that earned the admiration of their enemies. They had simply been outgeneraled at the operational level.   The Second Battle of Changsha, Phase Three, had cost China two of its finest armies. The 10th Army had departed Hengyang over 30,000 strong and returned barely 2,000. The 74th Army had suffered a crushing defeat from which it would require months to rebuild. Wang Yaowu had walked alone through the dark to Liuyang. Li Yutang had stood in the autumn wind at a schoolyard and looked at what remained of the men who had written their determination in blood.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Phase Three of the second battle of Changsha showed Anami Korechika using intelligence and planning to blunt China's elite forces as Chiang Kai-shek reluctantly deployed the "Iron Army" 74th and the 10th. Intercepted communications enable encirclement and heavy losses. Li Yutang's merit and experience shape resistance, yet Japanese strategy dominates from the outset through coordinated advances.

Welcome to the Tapt News podcast. A snapshot of the latest stories, including: ** Asylum seeker boat intercepted ** Aussies overpaying for data they don't use ** A mixed bag at Wimbledon The biggest news stories delivered three times a day with reports from across Australia and overseas. Subscribe now to make it part of your daily news diet.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Xav is back from the dead! We cross to the US ahead of the Socceroos' final qualifying game at the World Cup with Amos Gill and some rogue chants. Katie Lamb has intercepted an email on Ryan Daniels wanting a Logie! West Coast's Liam Baker on his temper getting the best of him as a kid.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Your friend's mom talked her into giving up her baby, then adopted the child and won't return her. Can it be legally undone? Welcome to Feedback Friday!And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at friday@jordanharbinger.com. Now let's dive in!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1347On This Week's Feedback Friday:Can Gabe fend off being chilly in Chile with a warm bowl of (vegan) chili? He may tell us, or he may not. Perhaps his story is altogether more death-defying and sure to have you on the edge of your seat, but you'll only know if you don't skip ahead to about 26 minutes and 35 seconds!Your young friend clawed her way back from heartbreak and depression after her baby's father vanished — only to learn her own mother quietly adopted the child and now refuses to give her back. Intercepted mail, surrendered custody, and her church branded a cult. Is there any path home to her daughter?Your daughter handed her husband the family finances for 21 years and trusted every word — until one credit report detonated the whole story. The $85k in savings? Gone. Secret high-interest loans, hidden cards, lies about his bonuses, $75K in debt, and she's staying. So where did the money go?Recommendation of the Week: Freezing your credit — a free, fast, legally guaranteed way to lock down your credit report (and your kids') against identity theft and synthetic ID fraud.Jordan and his 80-year-old dad have a heart-to-heart about the benefits of therapy even in later life on this special Father's Day BetterHelp-sponsored segment.Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at friday@jordanharbinger.com!Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger.Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi.And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Keith Bodnarchuk, President and CEO of Cosa Resources Corp. (TSXV: COSA) (OTCQB: COSAF) (FSE: SSKU), joins me to review the news released on May 26th regarding the multiple intercepts of uranium mineralization from the winter drill program, followed by the news on May 28th which announced summer plans for the largest drill program to date at the Company's Murphy Lake North ("MLN") project.      Muphy Lake North is a joint venture between Cosa and Denison Mines Corp. (TSX: DML) (NYSE American: DNN) and is located three kilometres east of IsoEnergy's Hurricane deposit, in the eastern Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan. Cosa is the project operator and holds a 70% interest with Denison holding a 30% interest.    Winter Drill Program Assay Highlights Uranium mineralization confirmed in three holes featuring a best intercept in drill hole # MLN26-013 of 5.0 metres averaging 0.55% U3O8 including 0.5 metres 1.7% U3O8 along the Cyclone trend The 5.0 metre uranium intersection in MLN26-013 also contains 4.1% nickel and 1.7% cobalt, consistent with multiple polymetallic eastern Athabasca uranium deposits including Cigar Lake, Key Lake, and Hurricane Uranium mineralization is shallow at 265 metres depth and remains open along strike for 600 metres to the west and 600 metres to the east   Summer Drill Program: Multiple intersections of unconformity related uranium mineralization remain open along strike for 600 metres in both directions; drilling to focus on step-out tests of the Cyclone mineralization approximately 265 metres below surface Largest drill program to date at Murphy Lake North will commence in mid-June and comprise approximately 6,000 metres and15 drill holes Denison participating in funding 2026 exploration at MLN to maintain its 30% interest   Next Steps Crews are preparing to mobilize, and a rapid start-up is expected as the drill and supporting equipment remains on site at MLN. The Company expects to announce the commencement of drilling in mid-June, which will take approximately two months to complete, and will be followed by drilling at the Company's Darby joint venture.       If you have any questions for Keith regarding Cosa Resources, then please email them into me at Shad@kereport.com   * In full disclosure, Shad is a shareholder of Cosa Resources at the time of this recording and may choose to buy or sell shares at any time.   Click here to follow the latest news from Cosa Resources   For more market commentary & interview summaries, subscribe to our Substacks:   The KE Report: https://kereport.substack.com/ Shad's resource market commentary: https://excelsiorprosperity.substack.com/     Investment disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Investing in equities and commodities involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Guests and hosts may own shares in companies mentioned.  

Your daily news in under three minutes. At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes! Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

00:08 — Mark Joseph Stern is a legal analyst who covers courts and the law for Slate. He is also co-host of the Amicus podcast.  00:33 — Yue Stella Yu covers politics for CalMatters, with a particular focus on campaigns, elections and voters. 00:45 — Gregory Terry is an Oakland resident who participated in the the Global Sumud Flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces on the way to Gaza. He is joined by his mother Laura Torino.  The post Supreme Court Home Stretch; Plus, Primary Elections Coverage; And, Bay Area Participants of Global Sumud Flotilla Intercepted and Detained by Israeli Forces appeared first on KPFA.

Our next guest on Saturday Magazine, is  Patrick Keyser, the father of Gemma O'Toole, one of 11 Australians detained by Israeli forces after joining a humanitarian flotilla attempting to reach Gaza this week. The activists say they were trying to break what aid agencies describe as a catastrophic humanitarian blockade, with Gaza now facing mass starvation, collapsed hospitals, and a civilian death toll that has reached levels many international observers say are almost without precedent in modern conflict. The flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters. Detainees allege beatings, humiliation, stress positions, sexual abuse, Tasering and deprivation of food and water. Israel denies the allegations. Global outrage intensified after Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released video of bound detainees kneeling on the ground while he taunted them and called them terrorists. Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong condemned the footage as ‘shocking and unacceptable'.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/penny-wong-condemns-israeli-minister-over-shocking-and-unacceptable-treatment-of-flotilla-activists-ntwnfb?utm_source=chatgpt.com The post Sat, 23rd May, 2026: Patrick Keyzer, father of one of the 11 Australians on the flotilla intercepted by Israel attempting to reach Gaza appeared first on Saturday Magazine.

Most AI acquisitions add a layer. This one removed a layer — for everyone else.Anthropic acquired Stainless, the developer tools company that built SDKs for OpenAI, Google, Cloudflare, Perplexity, and dozens of other AI and fintech platforms. Then they wound down all hosted Stainless products. The shared supplier is no longer neutral. The tollbooth just changed hands.Christian and Ayelet break down what happened, why it matters for every agency and AI startup in the market, and what the KPMG Q1 2026 M&A data actually says about where deal activity is heading.One deal. One market update. Fifteen minutes. (Plus some Riverside FM chaos.)TIMESTAMPS0:00 — Welcome back, noisy week, Publicis/LiveRamp hangover0:45 — KPMG Q1 2026 M&A report: deal values up 88.3% to $446B, deal count down2:30 — Strategic vs. PE deal activity: 864 strategic, 495 PE in Q1 20263:23 — Advertising sector: 145 deals in Q1 2026, flat to slightly up4:00 — Why Christian is predicting a Q2 uptick in strategic activity4:42 — The deals happening behind closed doors that don't show in the data5:01 — Deal: Anthropic acquires Stainless — $300M+ for the SDK plumbing of the AI industry5:45 — What Stainless actually does: API specs into ready-to-use SDKs across languages6:10 — The competitive denial angle: Stainless built SDKs for OpenAI, Google, Cloudflare, Perplexity6:30 — What "winding down hosted products" actually means for Stainless customers7:44 — Deal terms: $300M+ reported, ~2x the December 2024 Series A valuation of $150M8:00 — Anthropic's acquisition pattern: Wunderkind, Intercepted, Coefficient Bio, now Stainless9:00 — The through line: small specialized teams making Claude better — except Stainless is different9:16 — If you're a shared supplier to competing platforms, you are an acquisition target10:03 — Why this matters for every agency and commerce business building on AI10:30 — The MCP angle: Model Context Protocol and why connectivity is the next battleground12:29 — Why Anthropic investing in Stainless is probably also an aggressive MCP build13:46 — The AI exit multiple conversation: how the timeline is compressing14:25 — Grapevine AI / New Engine: outsized early exit with real AI capability15:05 — "Capture the flag" — why traditional grow-then-sell timelines no longer apply15:21 — Wrap, Memorial Day wishes, and please someone recommend an alternative to RiversideLink to the KPMG report: https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/mergers-acquisitions-trends-tech-media-telecom.html

Karl & Vinnie scrub in for a brand-new episode of The Creep Off to answer one important question: Who is the Creepiest Nursing? Plus a fresh edition of Karl's Cop Cam, featuring guns, car chases and a good boy named Danger. This week's Scum Parade features a negligent OnlyFans model, a man who liked shopping at Walgreens way too much, and a woman who ate all the food!Don't forget to vote for who brought the biggest creep at patreon.com/thecreepoff.  Check out this week's scum parade stories here: Man arrested in Winter Garden, accused of recording in women's restroomRx-Rated: Police Say Man Stalked Walgreens Employee Through Store While Masturbating - Margate TalkOnlyFans creator convicted in client's bondage suffocation deathWisconsin stepmom Melissa Goodman accused of starving teen daughter enters plea — could spend the rest of her life behind barsThe score is currently Vinnie 3 - Karl 3 – Guest 4 Want more of the madness? Support the show on Patreon, Supercast to snag exclusive merch and get an extra bonus episode every week!Don't forget you can leave us a voicemail at 585-371-8108You can follow our results girl Mahalia @mahellllyeahYou can follow our Results girl Danni on Instagram @Danni_Desolation

Welcome to "The PLOT Against You Just Got INTERCEPTED — Acts 23." Today, Pastor Sean Pinder invites you to receive a word about divine protection, spiritual warfare, and how God exposes and cancels every secret plot, every conspiracy, and every plan the enemy has formed against your life — because the plot against you has already FAILED.More than forty men made a vow. They swore an oath that they would not eat or drink until they had killed the Apostle Paul. Forty people. One target. A secret conspiracy. And God already knew about every word of it."But Paul's nephew heard about the plot and went to the barracks and told Paul. Then Paul called one of the centurions and said, 'Take this young man to the commander. He has something important to tell him.'" — Acts 23:16-17 (NLT)Let these words resonate within your heart today. God used a young boy — Paul's nephew — to expose a plot that forty armed men had sworn in secret. The enemy thought the plan was hidden. The enemy thought no one knew. Take comfort in this truth — there is no plot formed against you in darkness that God cannot expose in the light. He sees every conspiracy. He hears every secret meeting. And He will always send the right person at the right moment to cancel what the enemy planned against your life."The commander called two of his officers and ordered, 'Get 200 soldiers ready to leave for Caesarea at nine o'clock tonight. Also take 200 spearmen and 70 mounted horsemen.'" — Acts 23:23 (NLT)Understand this — God sent 470 soldiers to escort one man. Forty men made a vow to kill Paul. God mobilized 470 soldiers in response. That is the God we serve. He does not match the enemy's resources — He OVERWHELMS them. Every plot against your life will be met with a divine response that is disproportionately greater than anything the enemy deployed against you.May this teaching from Acts 23:12-24 fill your heart with peace and remind you that no secret plot formed against you shall prosper. Remember — it is only when we trust in God's protection that we discover He has already been cancelling assignments against us that we never even knew existed. Thank you for joining me today. Subscribe for daily teachings, morning prayer broadcasts, and live services.

Centcom reported the U.S. Navy intercepted Iranian attacks on 3 U.S. Destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. A new report shows lower-income Americans are cutting back on their driving due to high gas prices. Americans across the ... ...

Centcom reported the U.S. Navy intercepted Iranian attacks on 3 U.S. Destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. A new report shows lower-income Americans are cutting back on their driving due to high gas prices. Americans across the ... ...

Centcom reported the U.S. Navy intercepted Iranian attacks on 3 U.S. Destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. A new report shows lower-income Americans are cutting back on their driving due to high gas prices. Americans across the ... ...

Centcom reported the U.S. Navy intercepted Iranian attacks on 3 U.S. Destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. A new report shows lower-income Americans are cutting back on their driving due to high gas prices. Americans across the ... ...

AP correspondent Ben Thomas reports as diplomatic efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the Iran war continue, there was more military confrontation reported Thursday.

AP's Lisa Dwyer reports there's been an exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran.

You thought you were dating. You were actually performing — alone, in the dark, with no witnesses. The modern dating machine sold you a lie so seductive it felt like freedom: that real love happens in private, that self-sabotage is just “my process,” and that needing people to see you makes you weak. That lie is older than the apps. It is colonial. It is the same psychological split that taught generations to distrust communal eyes and call isolation strength. Friendfluence is the antidote that refuses to stay quiet. It is not cute group dates or asking your friends for advice. It is the deliberate return of the container — the group as centerline, as living mirror, as live audit that will not let your old pattern complete itself in silence. When your people are allowed to witness the actual version of how you love, the inherited fracture starts to crack. The nervous system that learned to perform safety while hiding its damage finally gets data it cannot ignore. This is not about giving up power. It is about exposing the version of you that misuses power in private. By the end of this conversation, some part of you will feel it: you have been catching your own patterns late. The question is no longer whether you need witnesses. The question is whether you're finally ready to stop protecting the version of you that needed to stay unseen.

This program was broadcast on Friday May 1, 2025. Here are the main stories… Golders Green Stabbings: Huge focus is out of proportion  Palantir: Merger of state and corporate interests Palestine Action: Court of Appeal decision pending  Iran: Key data points to watch out for  UK Column 20th Anniversary Tickets Flotilla: Aid intercepted in International Waters OPCW: Six year legal battle won after challenging Syria narrative Charles: King checking up on the colonies in US  In Case You Missed It: Stories spotted by our UKC sleuths Host Mike Robinson is joined by Patrick Henningsen and Basil Valentine. 

Global ferry pilot Sam Rutherford is intercepted by fighter jets patrolling the Middle East while delivering a new Piper PA-28 from the Florida factory to India. Plus, news discussion on the surprise shutdown of Waco Aircraft, ForeFlight's emergency glide function, the elimination of ADS-B landing charges in Florida, and the latest from Aero Friedrichshafen and Sun'nFun.

Your daily news in under three minutes. At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes! Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Ray Murphy, Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at University of Galway, joins the panel of Shane Moynihan, Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin Mid-West, Charlie Ward, 100% Redress TD for Donegal, Paul Gogarty, Independent TD for Dublin Mid-West and Sinead O'Carroll, Editor of The Journal.ie.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Victoria police major drug bust detectives have arrested two people in relation to an ongoing investigation into drug trafficking between NSW and Victoria. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

U.S. President Donald Trump says U.S. forces have seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman after it attempted to bypass a naval blockade. Iran has reportedly attacked U.S. military ships in retaliation.

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin:  First—Iran has reopened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, President Trump says a deal is close, and oil markets are already responding. But with pressure on Tehran still firmly in place and key details unresolved, it's not yet clear whether this marks a real turning point—or just another phase in a very fragile standoff. Later in the show—a mysterious letter from Cuba meant for President Trump is intercepted in Miami, revealing a quiet attempt by the Castro family to bypass Washington's official channels. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President's Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Ultra Pouches: Don't sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% Off with code PDB at https://takeultra.com ! #UltraPouches #ad Shopify: Launch your dream business with Shopify. Sign up for your $1/month trial at https://Shopify.com/PDB and start selling today! BUBS Naturals: Live Better Longer with BUBS Naturals. For A limited time get 20% Off your entire order with code PDB at https://Bubsnaturals.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Organised crime groups likely still dictate New Zealand's drug market despite huge increases in seized product. Border drug busts jumped from 1.5 to 6.5 tonnes between 2018 and 2024. In the first nine weeks of 2026, more than 12 tonnes of cocaine was stopped in the Pacific. Chair of Ministerial Advisory Group for Organised Crime Steve Symon told Mike Hosking groups are stockpiling. He says they're getting enough drugs in so they can still control prices, even when there are disruptions. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's episode covers rising regional tensions impacting tech infrastructure in the UAE, Khalaf Al Habtoor's response to Jeffrey Sachs' warning on Dubai, and growing backlash over war-related betting platforms like Polymarket.

The series on the houses wouldn't have felt complete without one last fairytale. In this, the 40th and last episode of the series, we explore the German tale of Dornröschen, which loosely translates to 'the little rose inside the thorns'. It begins with a talking frog who crawls out of the water to deliver a prophecy to the bathing queen. And it takes us into those places in ourselves that feel dormant. We feel that these parts have such great potential in our lives, but they remain fast asleep. Until...Well, that's the thing. The story takes us into the element of timing, of transits, of progressions, of gestation and of waiting until that which slumbers is ready to arouse. I'm joined in a very synchronous way by Milena Kadziela, a fellow astrologer and psychotherapist. She sends a transmission from London, in the middle of the night, on the Libra Full Moon. The moon was at 12°, which is the 13th degree.Milena, a listener to the show, felt that the one element that was missing in the series was that of the intercepted house. It happens that she uses this very story, Briar Rose, to speak to those hard to access parts of the chart. And so, she joined us for a late cameo in the episode to drop her night wisdom on us all. If you'd like to find out more about Milena's work you can find her here. You can read the story itself here.The image for the podcast is again from Artist and Patron, Lucy Dodd. Her work is also featured on episode 124 with Melanie Reinhart. With an overlaid princess from a 1981 edition of La Belle Au Bois Dormant & Autres Contes Merveilleux (Sleeping Beauty & Other Wonderful Tales), published by Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri and Hachette.Join the Newsletter!Podcast Musician: Marlia CoeurPlease consider becoming a Patron to support the show!Go to OnTheSoulsTerms.com for more.

Jess and Trisha talk about what they've been reading and then get into Book Club with Futbolista by Jonny Garza Villa and sports romance broadly. News No news this week because it's a Book Club week! This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Books Discussed The Starter Ex by Mia Sosa Back and Forth From New York by alphalupi Futbolista by Jonny Garza Villa Please Don't Go by E. Salvador Out On the Ice series by Kelly Farmer His Convenient Husband by Robin Covington Summer Official by Rebekah Weatherspoon The Playbook series (starting with Intercepted) by Alexa Martin Shoot Your Shot by Lexi LaFleur Brown Flagrant by Alexandria House The Long Game by Elena Armas Rookie Mistake by Anna Zabo and LA Witt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're told this is about bad guys, nuclear threats, and national security. History—and this moment—tell a different story. In this You're Not Gonna Believe This Bullshit episode, Amanda traces America's regime change playbook—then sits down with investigative journalist, co-founder of Drop Site News, Jeremy Scahill to break down what's really driving the current wars in Iran and Gaza. - Trump launching strikes on Iran amid disputed “nuclear threat” claims - The coordination of war decisions with Netanyahu—and why that matters - Kushner's role in Gaza reconstruction plans that look a lot like real estate development - “Negotiations” with Iran happening alongside military escalation - The long history of regime change—and who actually benefits If it feels chaotic, it's not. It's a pattern. About Jeremy:  Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of Drop Site News. He was previously a Senior Correspondent and Editor-at-Large at The Intercept and is one of the three founding editors of The Intercept. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international best-selling books “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” and “Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and “Democracy Now!”. He continues to host the podcast Intercepted. Scahill's work has sparked several congressional investigations and won some of journalism's highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for “Blackwater.” Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film “Dirty Wars,” which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Follow We Can Do Hard Things on:  Instagram — ⁠https://www.instagram.com/wecandohardthings⁠ TikTok — ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@wecandohardthingsshow⁠

Alex Jones claims IS intelligence has intercepted Iranian cryptuc communications which have given the green light to Iranian sleeper cells to attack inside of the US.

Alex Jones claims IS intelligence has intercepted Iranian cryptuc communications which have given the green light to Iranian sleeper cells to attack inside of the US.

Victor Cantore, President and CEO of Amex Exploration Inc. (TSXV: AMX) (OTCQX: AMXEF), joins me for a comprehensive update on all the development work and exploration results that will be feeding into the upcoming bulk sample, and 2-Phase economic studies around their 100% owned high-grade Perron Gold Project located in Quebec, Canada.  Additionally, we discuss the near-term exploration campaign about to begin on the expanded land package across the provincial border into Ontario, from staking claims and their 2 recent acquisitions of Perron West and the Abbotsford/Hepburn properties.   We start off getting the roadmap to the near-term trial mining of the high-grade Champagne Zone for the upcoming bulk sample.  Once the permit is received in March, the plan is to mine the bulk sample material and process ~40,000 tonnes via toll-milling at a nearby plant, which should result in around 20,000-23,000 ounces of gold production.   In addition to what they will learn in the process, after investing $40 million into the bulk sample process, it should return about $80-$100 million in non-dilutive capital back, allowing for progressing right into Phase 1 toll-milling for the next several years.  There will be an initial Phase 1 Feasibility Study coming out later this month, outlining the first 4+ years of moving into initial production through trucking over high-grade ore and tolling milling it at nearby plants in Quebec.     The revenues generated from these processes will fund all the exploration and development work that feeds into the Phase 2 studies; for the move into a larger production scenario processing ore right on their property.  All of the data collected and information learned, in combination with with expanding resources from all the ongoing drilling will then be factored into the eventual Phase 2 Feasibility Study on the larger project; where building a processing plant on site will be released which envisions the true potential of the overall larger Project.   Recent Champagne Zone Grade Control Drill Results for the Bulk Sample:   Drill Hole # PE-19-47W1 – Intercepted 76.51 g/t Au and 7.57 g/t Ag over 6.4 meters (m), including 312.60 g/t Au and 25.85 g/t Ag over 1.55 m Drill Hole # PE-26-894 – Intercepted 110.05 g/t Au and 7.20 g/t Ag over 2.15 m, including 233.96 g/t Au and 14.90 g/t Ag over 1.00 m Drill Hole# PE-21-371W1 – Intercepted 52.36 g/t Au and 8.90 g/t Ag over 0.5 m   The exploration team will also be hard at work all year long in Quebec expanding and further updating their Resource Estimate; which currently hosts 2.3 million ounces of gold in all categories, with 1.615 million in Measured and Indicated, and 698,000 in Inferred.  The largest portion of those resources come from the Champagne Zone, but with strong contributions from the Grey Cat, Gratien, Western Denise, and Team Zones, and all areas are still open for expansion.    The Company plans to drill 100,000 meters, from both around the known deposit at Perron, as well as their newly acquired and staked lands in Ontario, Canada. On March 2nd, they announced having entered into an Exploration Agreement with the Apitipi Anicinapek Nation ("AAN") in respect of the Company's Perron West Project and Abbotsford and Hepburn Projects located in the province of Ontario (collectively, the "Ontario Projects"). There will be plenty of drill assay news coming out to the marketplace consistently throughout 2026 as the Project resources continue to grow.*     If you have any questions for Victor regarding Amex Exploration, then please email them into me at Shad@kereport.com, and we'll get those addressed or covered in future interviews.   In full disclosure, Shad is a shareholder of Amex Exploration at the time of this recording.   Click here to follow the latest news from Amex Exploration   For more market commentary & interview summaries, subscribe to our Substacks:   The KE Report: https://kereport.substack.com/ Shad's resource market commentary: https://excelsiorprosperity.substack.com/     Investment disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Investing in equities and commodities involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Guests and hosts may own shares in companies mentioned.

A Kent dad who lives in Abu Dhabi has told the podcast about the moment he was alerted to potential missile strikes. Justin Cooke received a message on his phone shortly before seeing puffs of smoke in the sky as the missiles were intercepted. The retaliatory strikes on Saturday followed an attack by America and Israel on Iran which killed the country's leader. Also in today's episode, the head of the Met Police says he's fiercely committed to restoring trust, five years on from the murder of Sarah Everard. The 33-year-old was abducted in Clapham by then serving officer Wayne Couzens from Deal, her body was later found in woodland near Ashford. We've been asking women in Rochester how safe they feel now. The Canterbury MP has raised concerns in the commons about funding for children with Special Educational Needs in Kent. It follows an announcement from the government that £4 billion will be invested to make mainstream schools more inclusive. A Kent football club say they've been left in limbo after developers dropped plans for two 3G pitches, as part of proposals for a new housing estate. Larkfield and New Hythe Football Club have been working with Obee Estates to deliver a community sports hub at the site of the former Oast Park Golf Course. However, a revised application includes 320 houses and a grass pitch only. And in sport, there's action in the quarter finals of the Kent Senior Cup tonight. Gillingham take on Tonbridge Angels at the Longmead Stadium. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode we discuss: No link because we had to to pay to get the full link for the first story Carolina Premium Beverage is merging with United Beverages of North Carolina to form a new company called United Carolina Beverages. This merger is expected to create one of the largest beer distributors in North Carolina and is set to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval. Oh No, anyways What booze does to your brain The post Episode 623 – The Intro Music got intercepted first appeared on The Craft Beercast.

AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports on another oil tanker seizure in the Caribbean.

The United States has stepped up its oil blockade of Venezuela, intercepting a third tanker in international waters in less than two weeks.

We're back in NYC this week, so of course we had to have New York legend Cat Cohen on the show!! Drew and Cat talk church camp, being cool in college acapella, their mutual engagements, mommy vloggers, freshman year roommates, and so much more. Cat IG: https://www.instagram.com/cat_cohen/?hl=enCat Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cat_cohen?lang=enFollow The Comment Section on IG! https://www.instagram.com/thecommentsection/ Watch Sidelined 2: Intercepted free on Tubi, Thanksgiving Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're back in NYC this week, so of course we had to have New York legend Cat Cohen on the show!! Drew and Cat talk church camp, being cool in college acapella, their mutual engagements, mommy vloggers, freshman year roommates, and so much more.Cat IG: https://www.instagram.com/cat_cohen/?hl=enCat Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cat_cohen?lang=enFollow The Comment Section on IG! https://www.instagram.com/thecommentsection/Watch Sidelined 2: Intercepted free on Tubi, Thanksgiving Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

[video available on spotify] welcome back to advice session, a series here on anything goes where you send in your current dilemmas, or anything you want advice on, and i give you my unprofessional advice. today's topic is about work life and career paths. Save Your WayTM from Hotels.com. Learn more at hotels.com/product/save-your-way/ Watch Sidelined 2: Intercepted free on Tubi, Thanksgiving Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: A Russian intelligence ship is spotted just 15 miles off the coast of Hawaii. We'll look at what it was doing there and what it may have been gathering. The State Department is preparing to designate Venezuela's Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization — a major step that increases pressure on Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.  YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/MIKE and use code MIKE to get our exclusive discount of up to 50% off. TriTails Premium Beef: Feed your legacy. Visit https://trybeef.com/pdb American Financing: Call American Financing today to find out how customers are saving an avg of $800/mo. NMLS 182334, https://nmlsconsumeraccess.org - APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.196% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-885-1881 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit https://www.AmericanFinancing.net/PDB Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Common Man Hour 1 --Wheel of Topics --5 C's --Peek at the Purple --Paul's Intercepted Emails --Wolves Win

Common Man Hour 1 --Wheel of Topics --5 C's --Peek at the Purple --Paul's Intercepted Emails --Wolves WinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Common Man Hour 1 --Wheel of Topics --5 C's --Peek at the Purple --Paul's Intercepted Emails --Wolves WinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ben Criddle talks BYU sports every weekday from 2 to 6 pm.Today's Co-Hosts: Ben Criddle (@criddlebenjamin)Subscribe to the Cougar Sports with Ben Criddle podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cougar-sports-with-ben-criddle/id99676

Thursday, October 2. The seven stories you need to know today.Read today's briefing.If you're not a subscriber, click here to start.

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. Military correspondent Emanuel Fabian joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's episode. Two people were killed and three seriously injured when a man drove a car into people outside a packed Orthodox synagogue in Manchester, northern England, on Thursday and then began stabbing them, in a terror attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. The rabbi leading Yom Kippur services at the Manchester synagogue targeted in a deadly terror attack was hailed as a hero, with eyewitnesses describing how he helped protect congregants. Fabian begins the program with some updates from Gaza where an IDF officer was seriously wounded and two other troops, including a reservist, were lightly injured by gunfire during fighting in the central Strip earlier today. He reports on the five rockets that were launched by Hamas from northern Gaza toward Ashdod last night, with four intercepted by air defenses and one hitting an open area. Israel’s navy intercepted what remained of the 47-boat Global Sumud Flotilla attempting to break its maritime blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. We will hear about this Yom Kippur operation that ended around 2 pm today. Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates. For further reading: 2 killed, 4 seriously injured in Yom Kippur attack at UK synagogue; terrorist shot dead Israel intercepts Gaza flotilla, says blockade not breached; Thunberg, others detained Hamas fires 5 rockets from Gaza on Yom Kippur, triggering sirens in Ashdod; no injuries Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Podwaves. IMAGE: Activists in orange life jackets sit aboard a Gaza-bound Sumud flotilla boat as Israeli navy soldiers sail it into the port of Ashdod, Israel, October 2, 2025, after it was intercepted while approaching the Gaza coast. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.