New Democratic Congress will likely strip the gilding from Trump's Golden Dome

New Democratic Congress will likely strip the gilding from Trump's Golden Dome

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

Two of the top lawmakers backing the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense shield are among the wave of Republicans leaving Congress in the coming Democratic takeover, raising questions about the future of President Donald Trump's signature second-term defense initiative.

The shakeup on Capitol Hill comes after military officials signaled in recent months that they might backpedal from one element Trump asked for in Golden Dome: the capability to shoot down missiles in their initial boost phase shortly after launch.

The Golden Dome has escaped serious congressional scrutiny since Trump announced the program in January 2025, one week into his second term in the White House. That lack of scrutiny will change as Democrats take responsibility for writing the Pentagon's budget, introduce limits on funding, and put forth bills to strip out Golden Dome's most controversial component and give the program a new name.

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Physicists listened to electrical noise to crack a superconductor mystery

Physicists listened to electrical noise to crack a superconductor mystery

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

Superconductors carry electricity without resistance, but most only work a few degrees above absolute zero. In the late 1980s, copper-based materials called cuprates were found to superconduct at higher temperatures—reachable with affordable liquid nitrogen. Yet nearly 40 years later, physicists still don't agree on why.

In a recent Science study, a team of physicists led by Milan Allan of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Ingmar Swart of Utrecht University in the Netherlands has found some answers by listening to the faint electrical crackle of current flowing into a cuprate.

The missing electrons

Central to the mystery of cuprates’ high-temperature superconductivity is a strange state called the pseudogap. “The pseudogap is a phenomenon of missing electrons,” Allan said. Above the temperature at which cuprates become superconducting, some of their electrons seem to vanish—measurements find far fewer of them at the energies where they should be. “Everybody knows that from different probes, you see that there's these vanishing electrons, but nobody knows why,” Allan said.

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The Bantu expansion changed Africa. Scientists are still tracing how.

The Bantu expansion changed Africa. Scientists are still tracing how.

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

It’s not easy to extract iron from its ore. But the peoples of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe—the capital of a thriving kingdom in southern Africa between 1000 to 1700 AD—were masters.

At sites near the city’s stone ruins, clusters of iron-smelting furnaces survive today as mounds of rubble. At Mashava, a village 25 miles northwest, fragments bear fingermarks of those who long ago smoothed the structures’ clay interiors.

Some of the furnaces were nearly an adult’s arm span in width, with walls thick and strong to contain the heat of more than 2,100° Fahrenheit needed to smelt iron. Unlike other furnaces that required workers to force air into them with bellows, these were designed to suck air in, then out through a chimney, no human labor required. This would have made it significantly easier to produce the iron, which was fashioned into hoes, axes, and arrowheads.

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British soldier ignored order to pull his SIM card, then got blackmailed

British soldier ignored order to pull his SIM card, then got blackmailed

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

An Estonian newspaper recently revealed that a British soldier disobeyed a direct order to remove the SIM card from his cellphone before being deployed to a part of Estonia, approximately 90 miles west of the Russian border.

As a result of his refusal to engage in this element of operational security (opsec), the soldier, Daniel Barton-Kennedy, had his phone hacked, and nude photos of himself were stolen and used as blackmail against him.

Eventually, Barton-Kennedy was court-martialed for disobeying a lawful command, pled guilty, was reduced in rank, and ordered to serve 10 months in detention.

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Doctors pull knife from man's eye that went through his brain—and he's fine now

Doctors pull knife from man's eye that went through his brain—and he's fine now

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

A man in his 20s showed up to a UK hospital with the hilt of a knife sticking out of his face. The 15 mm-wide blade hidden within went completely through his right eye and through his brain, with the tip of the blade hitting the top of his skull.

Despite the ghastly injury, the man was alive and conscious when he arrived. He could still talk and move all four limbs. His doctors described him as being in a state of agitation. On the Glasgow Coma Scale, he scored a 12 (E3 V4 M5), indicating a "moderate" brain injury, just one point above "mild." He could open his left eye when told, but otherwise kept it closed (E3 score); he could talk and answer questions, but was confused (V4); and he intentionally moved away when pressure was applied to his body (M5).

In a report published Friday in BMJ Case Report, his doctors said they were concerned that in his confused, agitated state he may try to pull the knife out on his own. So, they swiftly sedated and intubated him. They put him on prophylactic treatments for bacterial infections, including tetanus. Then they used images to see what was going on in his head.

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Ships loiter near subsea cables amid Iran's warnings to Trump

Ships loiter near subsea cables amid Iran's warnings to Trump

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

Several tanker ships linked to Iran have been loitering over subsea Internet cables in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz—a possible indication that the Iranian government is preparing to attack such undersea infrastructure in response to any renewed US and Israeli strikes.

The movements of three sanctioned tankers and an Iranian fishing boat have been tracked near major undersea cables by the maritime intelligence firm Windward in October, according to the Financial Times. Six active cables currently cross through the contested Strait of Hormuz, linking the Middle East to Europe, Africa and Asia, with two more cables having segments under construction in the region.

Four countries, including Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, depend entirely upon such subsea telecommunications connections running through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint to link with the outside world. But other countries also depend heavily on the region's undersea cable network—one third of India’s westbound Internet traffic goes through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

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Re-releases of Wing Commander, Ultima titles hit Steam and GOG

Re-releases of Wing Commander, Ultima titles hit Steam and GOG

fivenewscrypto    novembre 09, 2026   

Many people are not big fans of game publisher EA right now for good reason, but for those who remember a better time in the 1990s, there's a little good news. Twenty-five classic games from that EA era have been lightly remastered and updated, then placed for sale on Steam and GOG, including several Wing Commander games and nearly the entire Ultima series.

Below is the full list of remastered or re-released games:

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