George C. Marshall Institute

So far we’ve been seeing lots of signs of a cold coming winter: birds migrating from Siberia to Britain weeks early, unusual early-autumn snowfalls across Europe, various reports warning of the worst winter in decades etc. In August, weather analyst Gavin Partridge put up one of his weather videos here. In it he looks at past solar activity, the current Solar Cycle no. 24, and its strong similarity to Solar Cycle no. 12.

For several years, the U.S. has been complaining of state-sponsored hacking attacks from China which had mostly targeted the country’s hi-tech companies with the aim of stealing secrets and passing them over to Chinese firms. In an attempt to reiterate its stand against cyber stealing, a number of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have come up with a list of hackers who they believe should get arrested. China reportedly took the list into consideration and have placed a number of suspects under arrest. The exact number of people that were arrested remained unclear.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed as a result of a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board says. The missile hit the front left of the plane causing other parts to break off, it said in a final report into the July 2014 disaster, which killed 298 people.