This will mark the first time that the Mecca Alliance has been invoked and it also comes as the recognized government of Yemen has launched a counteroffensive that they say is intended to fully wrest control of the country from Ansar Allah.

There’s a lot of information flying around about military movements in Yemen, with the recognized government claiming that they took back control of the coastal city of Mokha (once a massive exporter of coffee from which the term mocha is derived) that was lost about a month ago and Ansar Allah claiming that the city of Taizz (which is Yemen’s third largest city) has now been fully cut off and surrounded.

One thing of interest to watch for is Iran’s reaction to this. Iran has previously had little issue against bombing Saudi Arabia and other overseas countries that do not directly border it, but they have been much more reluctant to antagonize direct neighbors with strong land forces (aside from in Iraq where Iran holds much influence over significant local militias) so it is unclear what sort of response they may have for Turkey and Pakistan. And for their part Turkey and Pakistan are very uninterested in war with Iran due to economic and stability concerns. Yet, Ansar Allah is one of Iran’s more powerful remaining allies so this escalation demands some kind of response lest they lose standing.

Joint declaration made by Egypt, Eritrea and the recognized governments of Sudan and Somalia that is fairly clearly targeted at Ethiopia. The actual text of the declaration can be read here which I’ll copy:

El Alamein Joint Declaration Issued by the Quadrilateral Consultative Summit between Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia El Alamein, 4 October 2026

1. At the invitation of His Excellency President Abdel Fattah El‑Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, His Excellency President Isaias Afwerki, President of the State of Eritrea; His Excellency President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, President of the Federal Republic of Somalia; and General Abdel Fattah Al‑Burhan, Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council of the Republic of Sudan, convened today, 4 October 2026, in New Alamein City for a Quadrilateral Summit. The Presidents held intensive fraternal consultations on current regional and international issues, as well as on ways to strengthen political, trade, and economic cooperation among the four countries, and to enhance consultation and coordination among them.

1. The Summit underscored the necessity of adhering to the fundamental principles and pillars of international law as the foundation for regional stability and cooperation, particularly respect for the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of the states of the region. The leaders emphasized the importance of upholding the values of good‑neighborliness, rejecting interference in the internal affairs of the region’s states under any pretext, supporting national institutions, and promoting political and peaceful solutions to conflicts.

1. The Summit discussed the coordination of joint efforts to achieve regional stability, create a conducive environment for shared and sustainable development, and advance economic, trade, and cultural relations. The leaders emphasized that such cooperation would contribute to fostering economic integration and interconnection, promoting sustainable development, and strengthening ties among the peoples of all participating states, taking into consideration their unity of purpose and common destiny.

4.The summit addressed a number of issues and the views of the participating leaders were aligned on the following:

a- Supporting the unity, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national institutions of the Republic of Sudan; rejecting the establishment of any parallel entities; encouraging the resumption of a Sudanese-owned and Sudanese-led political process; supporting national institutions; and categorically rejecting any support for mercenaries.

b- Supporting the unity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia; rejecting any interference or actions targeting its territorial integrity and national sovereignty; and rejecting any recognition of or support for the so-called "Somaliland," as this constitutes an infringement upon the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia.

c- Supporting the Federal Republic of Somalia’s counter-terrorism efforts and the empowerment of state institutions to extend their control over the entire territory; and calling upon regional and international partners to provide adequate, sustainable, and predictable funding for the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) to support the security transition process and enable the mission to execute its mandate regarding the orderly transfer of security responsibilities to Somali forces.

d- Affirming the principle of freedom of navigation and that the governance of the Red Sea is the exclusive responsibility of the littoral states.

e- Emphasizing the importance of respecting international law regarding transboundary rivers—including the Nile River—particularly the principle of "no harm" and the obligation to cooperate through prior notification, consultation, and consensus; and categorically rejecting any unilateral measures that harm the existing water uses of the two downstream Nile states.

f-Continuing to further strengthen consultation and coordination among the four countries and other sisterly African nations.

5.The leaders agreed to establish a mechanism to follow-up on the outcomes of this consultative summit, which will be held periodically, and whenever the need arises, to enhance consultation and coordination among them.

6.The Presidents of Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia expressed their sincere appreciation for the hosting of this consultative summit.

For context all of these states have various problems with Ethiopia. Egypt wants to contain Ethiopia as if Ethiopia grows too strong and stable Egypt is afraid that Ethiopia could use its status as the source of the bulk of the water of the Nile River to bend Egypt over a barrel and extract whatever concessions since the overwhelming majority of Egypt’s population are right along the banks of the Nile and rely utterly upon it. Eritrea had a thaw with Ethiopia after a long period of terrible relations since independence of Eritrea and the extended cold war and joined in the earlier Tigray War as a quite vicious participant on Ethiopia’s side, but that went frosty after Ethiopia cut Eritrea out of the peace deal. Since then Ethiopia has done some saber rattling about securing a port by any means necessary, including by force if peaceful means fail. Recently they cut diplomatic relations as Ethiopia views Eritrea as supporting Ethiopian rebels. Sudan is livid at Ethiopia and has made allegations that Ethiopia is training RSF rebels in camps across the border and also launching/allowing drone attacks to be launched from Ethiopian airports to strike Sudan including in its capital city’s international airport. Some Ethiopian rebels have actually been helping out the recognized Sudan government against RSF, such as Army 70. And for Somalia aside from intermittent wars between them there was a relatively recent incident where Ethiopia tried to become the first country to recognize the Somaliland separatists trying to break out of Somalia in exchange for a port deal, only to get cold feet and backtrack under intense international pressure.

It seems like Ethiopia is thus far doing much better against the rebels than the government forces fared last time (it did bulk up the military and get a lot of drones) despite fewer allies, they recently occupied the capital of the TDF rebels which is hardly an auspicious start for the rebels in a war they initiated. That said, the rebels in Tigray are tenacious and had not only their capital but many vital interior areas occupied in the last war before launching Operation Alula and turning the tides so they can’t necessarily be counted out just for having lost Mekelle, especially if they do actually have substantial foreign support… remains to be seen how the four aforementioned countries will react if Ethiopia really does start dismantling the various rebel movements within it in earnest.

About a half year or so ago I got Sarracenia flava from a garden center and planted it in a mix of soil from the pot it came in (which was a lot of sphagnum moss I think) and around that the loamy sand from my own property for bulk in a self-watering container. Back then it was just three flowers (you can see the dried remnants of those in the very top left; they flower at a different time than they feed to not waste their efforts by making pollen to spread out and then eating the critter they put it on) and since then obviously it has grown a prodigious number of traps and also some non-trap phyllodia leaves.

Is anyone familiar with Sarracenia enough to know why so many traps and phyllodia seem crooked or wrinkly? Most Sarracenia flava that I see out and about or planted by other people seem more straight and “opened up” internally. It doesn’t seem to be harming the plant to a great extent as far as I can tell because it has still grown tremendously, but it is kind of weird. Example below of a more normal looking version I saw in cultivation at the Stanley Rehder carnivorous plant garden in NC, as you can see they are basically straight tall and full rather than having the kind of deformed look that mine do:

Also this is how they look in actual nature from pictures in the FloraQuest app by the Flora of the Southeastern United States (FSUS) people:

Just asking concerning the crooked/wrinkliness. I am not concerned about the brown parts on mine. When traps fill up with insects (and almost all of mine’s traps are like chimneys stacked high of fly corpses inside) the excess nitrogen from them has potential to scald the trap locally and if that scalding forms a full ring then the trap above that ring dies. Also the lids have a tendency to get a bit scorched by strong sun at times. But traps are disposable so no big deal as long as the roots aren’t scalded (and I’ve made sure to never fertilize the plant and used the low nutrient loamy sand from my backyard to keep the initial nutrients low). For some other info I always keep it moist if the rain is not enough (you can see some of the moisture loving native Diodia virginiana sprung up in the bottom) and it gets strong afternoon sun. I live in about the center of its native range although the conditions are too dry to grow it properly at my site in particular hence the container to retain water.

Seven armed groups have declared what they call the “Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival” against the government of Abiy Ahmed.

In the Tigray war that raged from 2020-2022 the Tigray Defense Forces and Oromo Liberation Army were at points allied against the government, government aligned militias and Eritrea.

However, this broader coalition (in addition to various minor groups) brings in most notably the powerful Fano rebels. The Fano rebels are Amhara nationalists who fought on the government’s side in the Tigray War, helping to conquer and garrison Western Tigray and meanwhile taking advantage of the opportunity to ethnically cleanse Tigray people from the region in favor of Amhara people. They have also clashed with Oromo armed groups. And the other way there have also been ex. massacres of hundreds of Amhara villagers at a time by the TDF. So the initial reaction is that this is quite the surprising leap for these groups which have such heavy bad blood standing in between them to form a partnership against the government.

Fano had become alienated from the government (as did some other then-allied forces like Eritrea) at the conclusion of the Tigray war when the government abruptly obtained peace in one-on-one negotiations with the TDF. This was done without involving negotiators from other allied parties that were left feeling betrayed for having bled heavily and carrying the government forces only to be excluded from shaping the peace. This suspicion heightened as the government of Ethiopia said vaguely that disputes over areas like Western Tigray would be “resolved constitutionally” rather than in that case explicitly gifting it to Amhara, and as the government began trying to disarm and reintegrate the various friendly militias which Fano viewed as making themselves defenseless when militias they had fought like OLA and TDF remained armed. Fano launched an insurgency and has vast sway in the Amhara countryside and briefly took the city of Debre Tabor before being chased away by drones. They were previously disorganized but have become increasingly unified.

Adding to the rebel issues, Ethiopia has problems with a lot of its neighbors. One of the big things that Abiy Ahmed wants is a port where landlocked Ethiopia does not have to pay as much money as it does at Djibouti, which is under Chinese protection. Abiy Ahmed has made a speech to parliament that this will be done by any means necessary. The two major candidates for this were Somalia (which has had terrible relations with Ethiopia for a long time) and Eritrea with which relations had now re-soured. Ethiopia tried to recognize Somaliland (which is attempting to separate from Somalia but is overwhelmingly unrecognized and has Somalia unionists controlling the eastern third of its territory in the North Eastern State/SSC-Khaatumo) in exchange for a port deal which was received with heavy international hostility so Ethiopia backed off (leaving the first and so far only country to recognize Somaliland as Israel in 2025). The Ethiopian government has also been sabre-rattling with Eritrea and claiming Eritrea has not vacated from area occupied in the Tigray War, that Eritrea has been arming Ethiopian rebels and re-publicizing Eritrean war crimes in the Tigray War that they previously had suppresssed. In addition to those, Ethiopia has waded into Sudan’s civil war on the side of the anti-government RSF, in alignment with the wealthy UAE which is aligned with Ethiopia on wishing to dismember Somalia and which has quite a lot of money to fling around to aligned parties. Ethiopia hosted much of the UAE gear that got kicked out of Yemen and Somalia, harbored a full blown training camp for the RSF and even had allegedly launched/allowed drones to be launched from its airports that rocked the Sudanese capital.

Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea are not really considered to be in a list of states that have their act together but the recognized governments of these places have backers in more prominent countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. In particular Egypt is very wary of Ethiopia due to their concern that a powerful Ethiopia could use its status as the source of the bulk of the Nile River (which the overwhelming majority of Egypt’s huge population lives along and depends on) to twist Egypt’s hand and bend them to kneel on whatever issue they might desire, particularly if aligned with Sudan.

That’s all to say, the government of Ethiopia seems to have made quite a large number of enemies, though it’s not without friends either. Ex. relations have been steadily improving with the strategic partners of the UAE, Israel and India, and also are good with neighboring Kenya and South Sudan. But the Ethiopian military did not exactly cover itself in glory in the Tigray War and had rebels come pretty close to the capital at a point even despite the help from allies like Fano and Eritrea that now are aligned against Ethiopia. One wonders how war would go if sparked again, as seems increasingly likely.

It’s hard to see in the picture but this partridge pea has multiple branches constituting probably half or more of the plant overall that partly snapped and fell with only like a third of the contact remaining but the branches are very much green and even still flowering and fruiting despite that situation a week and a half later amidst the summer heat. (It broke in a storm after adding weight by vigorously re-flowering to be almost all yellow after the cloudless sulphur caterpillars ate up all the older blooms… not as many flowers anywhere on it now that the caterpillars came back in force though). Meanwhile my wife’s potted Mimosa pudica died after a single day of not adding water when we noticed some parts of had fungal growth and tried to cut back on moisture…

Which of the plants you enjoy are clinging vigorously to life? Or, which ones not so much.

Pictures below:

Syria has been on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism since the list was created in 1979, but is now the last of the original parties on the list to be removed (more recently added parties Cuba, Iran and North Korea remain on the list).

This has been a major goal of the Syrian transitional government as that designation impedes investment due to sanctions applied with it and also restricts foreign aid and weapons deals. The article details that Syria has been working with banks such as Mastercard to enable the infrastructure to allow for international payments in Syria.

Another feather in the cap for the Syrian government this week was the announcement by the leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces of “the end of the mission of the Syrian Democratic Forces” and “its dissolution as an independent ​military force” as part of the agreed plan to integrate the forces.

However, challenges recently arose as well. Israeli airstrikes rocked an airbase in northwestern Syria last week under the justification of preventing Turkey from deploying forces to the base. This week the defense minister of Israel, Israel Katz, ascended Israeli-occupied Mount Hermon and proclaimed that Israel “will not move from Mount Hermon and the security zone as long as there are jihadist threats to the State of Israel.” Hikmat al-Hijri, a leader of the faith for Syrian Druze and the head of the National Guard militia that has clashed with the government and de facto controls much of Suwayda, gave a speech thanking Israel and stating that the Druze are an integral part of Israel with the same faith and ideology.

Have a longleaf pine I’ve been trying to grow in the SC Sandhills which has mostly been a trooper but suddenly a lot of the leaves turned brown and the remaining ones turned yellow. This is what also happened for the only other one on the property before it gave up and died very shortly thereafter the better part of a month ago.

Not sure what precisely is the cause but I imagine lacking water is the issue since we’re having very hot days and are still in a drought, although it weathered much more severe drought earlier this year no prob maybe the sheer heat pushes it over the edge. It was planted in the fall of last year so some but not a ton of time to build up the roots (which were also probably jacked up from curling around in a pot up until then anyway although I tried to gently break up the binding of the root ball to itself when I replanted it). I have been giving it supplemental water but if it’s doing this I imagine not enough.

Is it possible to bring a pine back from the brink when its already in this state by making sure it gets water every day or would you call it hopeless at this stage? Anyone have miracle stories? … if not, honestly I should try to get one of the plugs for it at a small stage if I need to try again so that it can grow the taproot properly instead of having to fix a messed up one… just sentimental because this is one of the first plants I tried to put in so I want to save it if I can but it’s following a trajectory I saw before.

This partridge pea was folding up its blooms and leaves to close shop for the night but this oddly gray bumblebee wasn’t budging from what I’m hoping is a deep nap. A couple others I chaos sowed grew as well but are runtier and sport maybe a couple flowers, this one however has dozens and dozens of blooms everywhere and there’s always some sort of buzz around it.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has been dismissed and is expected to be replaced by Ihor Klymenko.

Mykhailo Fedorov was a reformer who is credited with successes like directing money to purchase of medium and long range drones that are now being used very effectively, audits uncovering billions of dollars worth of overspending, moving some procurement to open tender, gamification of drone warfare with more points allotted to outcomes Ukraine prefers to incentivize (ex. killing enemy soldiers) and successfully lobbying Musk to shut down Starlink for Russia. However, he has had conflicts with the heads of the military such as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi; critics say that without a military background he is not qualified to plan a war, and that he is just good at attaching his name to pre-existing efforts that turned out well.

This article by the Israeli ynet website is stating that a cattle herd and with it a “civilian-agricultural presence” has been established by Yoel Zilberman, founder and CEO of Hashomer Hachadash. The location is in an enclave beyond the fence of the Golan Heights, and it was made for the purpose of warding off Syrian shephards and cattle from the area. To quote Yoel:

“My cow company pushed back the Syrian herds that had been here for 50 years,” he said. “The moment the Syrians saw that there was a cattle herd here, that there were civilian farmers and that there was a real hold on the ground, you saw the change. They moved their herds away because they were afraid we would confiscate them. This is no longer no-man’s land.”

As such, this confirms Israeli settler expansion into the UNDOF buffer zone. All countries recognize this to be Syrian territory, including the US, which is the sole country to officially consider the Golan Heights to be Israeli territory.

For a while now Turkey has been barred from having access to the F-35 plane (which is regarded as a very capable military aircraft). Trump has been making noises about allowing Turkey to buy it. This is strongly opposed by Greece and Israel as they are in an emerging block opposed to that Turkey is in, with Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-Turkey-Qatar-Egypt (plus dependents) on one side and UAE-India-Greece-Israel-Ethiopia (plus dependents) on the other. Both Greece and Israel already have the F-35, and it contains Israeli components that Israel would prefer not to have accessible to Turkey.

One potential obstacle is the S-400 system that Turkey bought from Russia after it did not secure the Patriot deal that it wanted. That was the stated reason for Turkey being kicked from the F-35 program so as to not have easy Russian access to information about the F-35 in an air defense context. Options have been floated for Turkey to sell it back to Russia or to a third party; Russia has stated that they’d be happy to buy it back (many will know they are in a crunch for air defenses right now) but the unpalatable aspect of that is that that would shore up Russia in the war against Ukraine, which runs counter to other Turkish efforts to militarily support Ukraine. On the other hand, to sell to a third party if they cannot get Russia to sign off would mean that they get a reputation for playing fast and loose with the contracts for military equipment sold to them, which closes doors to more sensitive technologies that other countries may not want to expose to the whims of politics and more expensive contracts to bake in the cost of that extra risk upfront.

The prospect of selling the F-35 to Turkey has some of both Republicans and Democrats opposed. Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Dina Titus are spearheading efforts to block the sale of the F-35 citing matters ranging from the S-400 to the Turkish occupation of North Cyprus, increasing anti-Israel rhetoric and more.

What a generous gift to those little flies! This is Sarracenia flava (yellow pitcher plant), a carnivorous native of the US Southeast Plains in a band from coastal Alabama out to southeastern Virginia. The weird looking things on the left side of the 2nd picture are the old structures for the flowers it previously had before the pitchers fully developed and opened up. (The flowers in question look like this and smell bad.) I’m not terribly sure of what the purple thing is since this is my first time keeping one, maybe that’s what develops into a seed pod? Anyway, seems to be a popular place to chill among the arthropods.

edit: initially botched the photos, maybe this works

The Arab League convened an emergency meeting in Cairo after Sudanese officials alleged that various drone attacks against targets such as Khartoum International Airport originated from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport. The Sudanese officials also alleged that these attacks were linked to support provided by the United Arab Emirates to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Ethiopia rejected the allegations and counter-claimed that Sudan was supporting hostile elements linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which the latter denied. Similarly the UAE also denied the allegations.

Earlier in February, Reuters said that Ethiopia made a secret training camp for thousands of RSF fighters near the Sudanese border, allegedly with financial and logistical backing from the UAE.

I’ve been at my house for the better part of a year and I’m happily finding I have many volunteers of the Rubus genus which seem to be doing well and are shooting out runners every which way. Almost all have yet to celebrate their first birthday and so are too young to bear fruit but this one predates my arrival and did start working on… this weird thing.

I thought this was a Southern Dewberry (Rubus trivialis). There is a field with like jillions of Southern Dewberries nearby and their fruits which started coming in earlier look very very similar to blackberries by my eyes with many tiny drupelets densely packed together and either black color if they’re ripe or green/red if not. However, this berry looks very different since it only has two comparatively huge drupelets. There are other flowers on this particular bramble but only one other on this one made fruit (that less mature fruit also has only two drupelets).

Is this like some kind of mutant? Or is that variation in fruiting not unheard of for this or similar plants? Just wondering since I’ve not yet seen any similar looking fruit out in that field even though they’re all over the place. For less exotic possible causes I can think of, we have had a massive drought that only lately broke so maybe it’s a resource thing (though that should also be the case for the field which is not irrigated?) or maybe pollination went badly since this particular fella is kind of isolated without many floricanes of fellow Rubus nearby.

I also have what I think is an immature Pennsylvania Blackberry (Rubus pennsylvanicus) without flowers on my property and saw some Sand Dewberry (Rubus cuneifolius) out in the field and who knows what I haven’t seen so maybe there could be hybrid shenanigans? But both of those also have fruit that look way more like a standard blackberry than this weird thing so I suspect not.

Bonus picture since I think I failed to make multipictures at the top: